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THE 

ROMAN REVOLUTION 



Oxford l University Press, Amen House, London E.O.4 

OI.ASOOW NIW YORK TOMOM'IO Ml UlOlJRNI AVI I UMJTON 
BOMBAY OAI ( IJ1TA MADRAS KARACHI KL’AI.A I.I MPUR 
(APfcTOVVN IBADAN NAIROBI A( CKA 



THE 

ROMAN REVOLUTION 


BY 

RONALD SYME 

CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRE 



First published by the Clarendon Press i<)39 
Reprinted lithographically in Great Britain 
at the University Press, Oxford 
from corrected sheets of the First Edition 
1952, J95& 

First issued m Oxford Paperbacks i960 
Reprinted i960 



PARENTIBVS OPTIMIS 
PATRIAEQVE 



PREFACE 


T HE subject of this book is the transformation of state and 
society at Rome between 60 B.c. and a.d. 14. It is composed 
round a central narrative that records the rise to power of 
Augustus and the establishment of his rule, embracing the 
years 44-23 B.c. (chapters vii-xxiii). The period witnessed 
a violent transference of power and of property; and the 
Principate of Augustus should be regarded as the consolidation 
of the revolutionary process. Emphasis is laid, however, not 
upon the personality and acts of Augustus, but upon his adherents 
and partisans. The composition of the oligarchy of government 
therefore emerges as the dominant theme of political history, 
as the binding link between the Republic and the Empire: it is 
something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory 
of the constitution. 

To that end, the space (and significance) allotted to :he 
biographies of Pompeius, Caesar and Augustus, to warfare, to 
provincial affairs and to constitutional history has been severely 
restricted. Instead, the noble houses of Rome and the principal 
allies of the various political leaders enter into their own at last. 
The method has to be selective: exhaustive detail cannot be 
provided about every family or individual. Even so, the subject 
almost baffles exposition. The reader who is repelled by a close 
concatenation of proper names must pass rapidly over certain 
sections, for example the two chapters (v and vi) that analyse 
the composition of the Caesarian party in the form of a long 
digression. 

No less than the subject, the tone and treatment calls for 
explanation. In narrating the central epoch of the history of 
Rome I have been unable to escape from the influence of the 
historians Sallust, Pollio and Tacitus, all of them Republican 
in sentiment. Hence a deliberately critical attitude towards 
Augustus. If Caesar and Antonius by contrast are treated 
rather leniently, the reason may be discovered in the character 
and opinions of the historian Pollio—a Republican, but a 
partisan of Caesar and of Antonius. This also explains what is 
said about Cicero and about Livy. Yet, in the end, the Princi¬ 
pate has to be accepted, for the Principate, while abolishing 
political freedom, averts civil war and preserves the non- 



viii PREFACE 

political classes. Liberty or stable government: that was the 
question confronting the Romans themselves, and I have tried 
to answer it precisely in their fashion (chapter xxxiii, Pax et 
Princeps). 

The design has imposed a pessimistic and truculent tone, to 
the almost complete exclusion of the gentler emotions and the 
domestic virtues. Avvafus and Tv^rj are the presiding divinities. 
The style is likewise direct and even abrupt, avoiding meta¬ 
phors and abstractions. It is surely time for some reaction from 
the ‘traditional’ and conventional view of the period. Much 
that has recently been written about Augustus is simply pane¬ 
gyric, whether ingenuous or edifying. Yet it is not necessary to 
praise political success or to idealize the men who win wealth 
and honours through civil war. 

The history of this age is highly controversial, the learned 
literature overwhelming in bulk. I have been driven to make a 
bold decision in the interests of brevity and clearness—to quote 
as much as possible of the ancient evidence, to refer but seldom 
to modern authorities, and to state controversial opinions quite 
nakedly, without hedging and without the support of elaborate 
argumentation. Further, the bibliography at the end is not 
intended as a guide to the whole subject: it merely contains, put 
together for convenience, the books and papers mentioned in 
the footnotes. 

It will at once be evident how much the conception of the 
nature of Roman politics here expounded owes to the supreme 
example and guidance of Miinzer: but for his work on Repub¬ 
lican family-history, this book could hardly have existed. In 
detail my principal debts are to the numerous prosopographical 
studies of Miinzer, Groag and Stein. Especial mention must 
also be made of Tarn’s writings about Antonius and Cleopatra 
(from which I have learned so much, though compelled to 
dissent in one matter of cardinal importance) and of Anton von 
Premerstein’s posthumous book Vom Werden und Wesen des 
Prinzipats. My opinions about the oath of allegiance of 32 B.c. 
and about the position of the Princeps as a party-leader naturally 
owe much, but do not derive entirely, from this illuminating 
work—in an earlier form and draft they were the substance of 
lectures delivered at Oxford in the summer of 1937. 

The index is mainly prosopographical in character, and it 
covers the footnotes as well as the text. If used in conjunction 
with the list of consuls and the seven genealogical tables it will 



PREFACE ix 

sometimes reveal facts or connexions not explicitly mentioned 
in the text. In some way or other most of the consuls and 
governors of military provinces gain admittance to the narrative. 
The immense number of characters mentioned in a brief and 
compressed fashion has been the cause of peculiar difficulties. 
Many of them are bare names, void of personal detail; their 
importance has been deduced from family, nomenclature, or 
rank; and most of them will be unfamiliar to any but a hardened 
prosopographer. For the sake of clearness, conventional labels 
or titles have often been attached; and the relevant evidence is 
sometimes repeated, in preference to an elaborate system of 
cross-references. 

For assistance in the reading of proofs and for improvements 
of expression and substance I am deeply under obligation to 
the following friends, Mr. E. B. Birley, Professor A. Degrassi, 
Mr. M. Grant, Mr. C. G. Hardie, Mr. A. H. M. Jones, Mr. 
R. Meiggs, Professor F. Miinzer, Mr. A. D. Peck and Miss M. V. 
Taylor —to say nothing of the alacrity and the patience of the 
readers of the Clarendon Press. 

Furthermore, 1 gladly take this opportunity to acknowledge 
the constant encouragement and the generous help that I have 
received from Mr. Last, the Camden Professor of Ancient 
History in the University of Oxford—the more so, precisely, 
because there is so much in the present volume that will make 
him raise his eyebrows. Its imperfections are patent and 
flagrant. It has not been composed in tranquillity; and it ought 
to be held back for several years and rewritten. But the theme, 
I firmly believe, is of some importance. If the book provokes 
salutary criticism, so much the better. 

oxford, i June 11939 S. 

NOTE TO SECOND IMPRESSION 

The occasion of a reprint enables the author to rectify certain 
mistakes of fact or attribution, and to remove some blemishes. 
It was not possible to register, still less to utilize, the writings 
and discoveries of the last twelve years, much as I should have 
liked to insert various small yet significant details accruing. Essen¬ 
tially, and strictly, therefore, the book is what it was when it first 
appeared. 

oxford, i January 1951 R. S. 



CONTENTS 

I. INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY . i 
IL THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY . . .10 

III. THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS . . .28 

IV. CAESAR THE DICTATOR . .47 

V. THE CAESARIAN PARTY . .59 

VI. CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS .78 

VII. THE CONSUL ANTONIUS . .97 

VIII. CAESAR’S HEIR . .112 

IX. THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME .123 

X. THE SENIOR STATESMAN . .135 

XI. POLITICAL CATCHWORDS . 149 

XII. THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS . .162 

XIII. THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME . . 176 

XIV. THE PROSCRIPTIONS . . .187 

XV. PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA .202 

XVI. THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS . 214 

XVII. THE RISE OF OCTAVIANIJS .227 

XVIII. ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS . .243 

XIX. ANTONIUS IN THE EAST . . .259 

XX. TOTA ITALIA . . . . .276 

XXI. DUX . . . . . . .294 

XXII. PRINCEPS . . . . . .313 

XXIII. CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE . . .331 

XXIV. THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS . . . .349 

XXV. THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE . . .369 




CONTENTS xi 

XXVI. THE GOVERNMENT . . . .389 

XXVII. THE CABINET.406 

XXVIII. THE SUCCESSION . . .419 

XXIX. THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME . . .440 

XXX. THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION . . .459 

XXXI. THE OPPOSITION . .476 

XXXII. THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES . . . .490 

XXXIII. PAX ET PRINCEPS . . . . .509 

APPENDIX: THE CONSULS . . .525 

LIST OF WORKS REFERRED TO . . . 530 

INDEX.535 

GENEALOGICAL TABLES .... At end 







ABBREVIATIONS 


AJP - American Journal of Philology. 

BCH -- Bulletin de correspondance hellenique. 

BMC —- British Museum Catalogue. 

BSR British School at Rome. 

CAH --- Cambridge Ancient History. 

CIL — Corpus lnscriptionum Latinarum. 

CP --- Classical Philology. 

CQ — Classical Quarterly. 

CR Classical Review. 

GGN ----- Gottingische gelehrte Nachrichten. 

IG ^ Inscriptions Graecae. 

1 GRR — Inscriptions Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes. 

ILS Inscriptions Latinae Selectae. 

IOSPE -- Inscriptions Orae Septentrionalis Pontis Euxini. 

JRS — Journal of Roman Studies. 

LE — W. Schulze, Zwr Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen. 

OGIS “ Orientis Gracci Inscriptions Selectae. 

PIR — Prosopographia Imperii Romani. 

P-W -- Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissen- 
schaft. 

RA — F. Miinzer, Romische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien . 

/?/r. M. — Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie. 

RM ~ Mitteilungen des deutschen archdologischen Instituls, romische 
Abteilung. 

SEG — Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum. 

SIG = Sylloge lnscriptionum Graecarum. 




I. INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND 

HISTORY 

T HE greatest of the Roman historians began his Annals with 
the accession to the Principate of Tiberius, stepson and son by 
adoption of Augustus, consort in his powers. Not until that day 
was the funeral of the Free State consummated in solemn and 
legal ceremony. The corpse had long been dead. In common 
usage the reign of Augustus is regarded as the foundation of 
the Roman Empire. The era may be variously computed, from 
the winning of sole power by the last of the dynasts through the 
War of Actium, from the ostensible restoration of the Republic 
in 27 B.C., or from the new act of settlement four years later, 
which was final and permanent. 

Outlasting the friends, the enemies and even the memory of 
his earlier days, Augustus the Princeps, who was born in the 
year of Cicero’s consulate, lived to see the grandson of his 
granddaughter and to utter a prophecy of empire concerning 
Galba, to whom the power passed when the dynasty of the 
Julii and Claudii had ruled for a century. 1 The ascension of 
Caesar’s heir had been a series of hazards and miracles: his 
constitutional reign as acknowledged head of the Roman State 
was to baffle by its length and solidity all human and rational 
calculation. It lasted for forty years. No astrologer or doctor 
could have foretold that the frail youth would outlive, by a quarter 
of a century, his ally and contemporary, the robust Agrippa; 
no schemer could have counted in advance upon the deaths of 
his nephew Marcellus, of Drusus his beloved stepson, of the 
young princes Gaius and Lucius, grandsons of Augustus and 
heirs designate to the imperial succession. Such accidents of 
duration and fortune the future held. None the less, the main 
elements in the party of Augustus and in the political system 
of the Principate had already taken shape, firm and manifest, as 
early as the year 23 B.C., so that a continuous narrative may run 
down to that date, thence to diverge into a description of the 
character and working of government. 

1 M. Junius Silanus, grandson of the younger Julia, was born in A.D. 14 (Pliny, 
NH 7, 58); on Augustus* remarks about Galba, cf. Suetonius, Galba 4, 1; Dio 64, 
1, i; note, however, Tacitus, Ann. 6, 20. 



2 INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 

Tax et Princeps.’ It was the end of a century of anarchy, 
culminating in twenty years of civil war and military tyranny. 
If despotism was the price, it was not too high: to a patriotic 
Roman of Republican sentiments even submission to absolute 
rule was a lesser evil than war between citizens. 1 Liberty was 
gone, but only a minority at Rome had ever enjoyed it. The 
survivors of the old governing class, shattered in spirit, gave up 
the contest. Compensated by the solid benefits of peace and by 
the apparent termination of the revolutionary age, they were 
willing to acquiesce, if not actively to share, in the shaping of 
the new government which a united Italy and a stable empire 
demanded and imposed. 

The rule of Augustus brought manifold blessings to Rome, 
Italy and the provinces. Yet the new dispensation, or ‘novus 
status’, was the work of fraud and bloodshed, based upon the 
seizure of power and redistribution of property by a revolutionary 
leader. The happy outcome of the Principate might be held to 
justify, or at least to palliate, the horrors of the Roman Revolu¬ 
tion: hence the danger of an indulgent estimate of the person 
and acts of Augustus. 

It was the avowed purpose of that statesman to suggest and 
demonstrate a sharp line of division in his career between two 
periods, the first of deplorable but necessary illegalities, the 
second of constitutional government. So well did he succeed 
that in later days, confronted with the separate persons of 
Octavianus the Triumvir, author of the proscriptions, and 
Augustus the Princeps, the beneficent magistrate, men have been 
at a lose? to account for the transmutation, and have surrendered 
their reason to extravagant fancies. Julian the Apostate invoked 
philosophy to explain it. The problem does not exist: Julian was 
closer to the point when he classified Augustus as a chameleon. 2 
Colour changed, but not substance. 

Contemporaries were not deceived. The convenient revival 
of Republican institutions, the assumption of a specious title, 
the change in the definition of authority, all that made no dif¬ 
ference to the source and facts of power. Domination is never 
the less effective for being veiled. Augustus applied all the arts 
of tone and nuance with the sure ease of a master. The letter 


1 As M. Favonius, the friend of Cato, observed: ^et pov elva t povapx^os 
-napa.v 6 p.ov noXepov €p<t>v\iov (Plutarch, Brutus 12). 

2 In the Caesares of Julian (p. 309 a) Silenus calls Augustus a chameleon: 
Apollo objects and claims him for a Stoic. 



INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 3 

of the law might circumscribe the prerogative of the First 
Citizen. No matter: the Princeps stood pre-eminent, in virtue 
of prestige and authority tremendous and not to be defined. 
Auctoritas is the word—his enemies would have called i tpotentia. 
They were right. Yet the ‘Restoration of the Republic’ was not 
merely a solemn comedy, staged by a hypocrite. 

Caesar was a logical man; and the heir of Caesar displayed 
coherence in thought and act when he inaugurated the proscrip¬ 
tions and when he sanctioned clemency, when he seized power 
by force, and when he based authority upon law and consent. 
The Dictatorship of Caesar, revived in the despotic rule of three 
Caesarian leaders, passed into the predominance of one man, 
Caesar’s grand-nephew: for the security of his own position and 
the conduct of affairs the ruler had to devise a formula, revealing 
to the members of the governing class how they could co-operate 
in maintaining the new order, ostensibly as servants of the Repub¬ 
lic and heirs to a great tradition, not as mere lieutenants of a 
military leader or subservient agents of arbitrary power. For 
that reason ‘Dux’ became ‘Princeps’. He did not cease to be 
lmperator Caesar. 

There is no breach in continuity. Twenty years of crowded 
history, Caesarian and Triumviral, cannot be annulled. When 
the individuals and classes that have gained wealth, honours 
and power through revolution emerge as champions of ordered 
government, they do not surrender anything. Neglect of the 
conventions of Roman political terminology and of the realities of 
Roman political life has sometimes induced historians to fancy 
that the Principate of Caesar Augustus was genuinely Republican 
in spirit and in practice—a modern and academic failing. Tacitus 
and Gibbon knew better. 1 The narrative of Augustus’ rise to 
supreme power, supplemented by a brief analysis of the working 
of government in the new order, will reinforce their verdict and 
reveal a certain unity in the character and policy of Triumvir, 
Dux and Princeps. 2 

Whether the Princeps made atonement for the crime and 


1 Tacitus, in his brief summary of the rise of Augustus {Ann. 1, 2), makes no 
reference at all to the ‘Restoration of the Republic’ in 28 and 27 B.C. Gibbon’s 
remarks (c. in, init.) may be read with profit. 

2 The Triumviral period is tangled, chaotic and hideous. To take it all for 
granted, however, and make a clean beginning after Actium or in 27 B.C. is an 
offence against the nature of history and is the prime cause of many pertinacious 
delusions about the Principate of Augustus. Nor is the Augustan period as straight¬ 
forward or as well known as the writers of biographies appear to imagine. 



4 INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 

violence of his earlier career is a question vain and irrelevant, 
cheerfully to be abandoned to the moralist or the casuist. 
The present inquiry will attempt to discover the resources and 
devices by which a revolutionary leader arose in civil strife, 
usurped power for himself and his faction, transformed a 
faction into a national party, and a torn and distracted land into 
a nation, with a stable and enduring government. 

The tale has often been told, with an inevitability of events 
and culmination, either melancholy or exultant. The conviction 
that it all had to happen is indeed difficult to discard. 1 Yet that 
conviction ruins the living interest of history and precludes a 
fair judgement upon the agents. They did not know the future. 

Heaven and the verdict of history conspire to load the scales 
against the vanquished. Brutus and Cassius lie damned to this 
day by the futility of their noble deed and by the failure of their 
armies at Philippi ; and the memory of Antonius is overwhelmed 
by the oratory of Cicero, by fraud and fiction, and by the 
catastrophe at Actium. 

To this partisan and pragmatic interpretation of the Roman 
Revolution there stands a notable exception. To one of the 
unsuccessful champions of political liberty sympathy has seldom 
been denied. Cicero was a humane and cultivated man, an 
enduring influence upon the course of all European civilization: 
he perished a victim of violence and despotism. The fame and 
fate of Cicero, however, are one thing: quite different is the 
estimate of his political activity when he raised up Caesar's 
heir against Antonius. The last year of Cicero's life, full of 
glory and eloquence no doubt, was ruinous to the Roman 
People. 

Posterity, generous in oblivion, regards with indulgence both 
the political orator who fomented civil war to save the Republic 
and the military adventurer who betrayed and proscribed his 
ally. The reason for such exceptional favour may be largely 
assigned to one thing—the influence of literature when studied 
in isolation from history. The writings of Cicero survive in 
bulk, and Augustus is glorified in the poetry of his age. Apart 
from flagrant scandal and gossip, there is a singular lack of 
adverse testimony from contemporary sources. 

Yet for all that, the history of the whole revolutionary period 
could be written without being an apologia for Cicero or for 
Octavianus—or for both at once. A section of it was so written 

1 Plutarch, Antemius 56: t8a yap ei? Kaiaapa navra TrepteXOeiv. 



INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 5 

by C. Asinius Pollio, in a Roman and Republican spirit. That 
was tradition, inescapable. The Roman and the senator could 
never surrender his prerogative of liberty or frankly acknowledge 
the drab merits of absolute rule: writing of the transition from 
Republic to Monarchy, he was always of the opposition, whether 
passionate or fatalistic. 

The art and practice of history demanded of its exponents, 
and commonly reveals in their works, a conformity to certain 
habits of thought and expression. The debt of Tacitus to Sal- 
lustius in style and colouring is evident enough: their affinity 
goes much deeper than words. Nor would it be rash to assert 
that Pollio was closely akin both to Sallustius and to Tacitus. 1 
All three sat in the Senate of Rome and governed provinces; 
new-comers to the senatorial aristocracy, they all became deeply 
imbued with the traditional spirit of that order; and all were 
preoccupied with the fall of Libertas and the defeat of the 
governing class. Though symbolized for all time in the Battle 
of Philippi, it was a long process, not a single act. Sallustius 
began his annalistic record with Sulla's death and the rise to 
power of Pompeius the Great. Pollio, however, chose the 
consulate of Metellus and Afranius, in which year the domi¬ 
nation of that dynast was established (60 B.c.). Tacitus in his 
Histories told of a great civil war, the foundation of a new 
dynasty, and its degeneration into despotism; in his Annals he 
sought to demonstrate that the Principate of the Julii and Claudii 
was a tyranny, tracing year by year from Tiberius down to 
Nero the merciless extinction of the old aristocracy. 

Pollio was a contemporary, in fact no small part of the transac¬ 
tions which he narrated—a commander of armies and an arbiter 
of high diplomacy; and he lived to within a decade of the death of 
Augustus. His character and tastes disposed him to be neutral 
in the struggle between Caesar and Pompeius—had neutrality 
been possible. Pollio had powerful enemies on either side. Com¬ 
pelled for safety to a decision, he chose Caesar, his personal 
friend; and with Caesar he went through the wars from the 
passage of the Rubicon to the last battle in Spain. Then he 
followed Antonius for five years. Loyal to Caesar, and proud 
of his loyalty, Pollio at the same time professed his attachment to 

1 As Pollio has perished, Tacitus and Sallust can be drawn upon for compen¬ 
sation. For example, the fragments of the preface of Sallust’s Histories , combined 
with Tacitus, Hist . 1, 1-3, will give some idea of the introduction to Pollio’s work 
on the Civil Wars. Cf. below, p. 9. 



6 INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 

free institutions, an assertion which his ferocious and proverbial 
independence of speech and habit renders entirely credible. 1 

Pollio, the partisan of Caesar and of Antonius, was a pessi¬ 
mistic Republican and an honest man. Of tough Italic stock, 
hating pomp and pretence, he wrote of the Revolution as that 
bitter theme demanded, in a plain, hard style. It is much to be 
regretted that he did not carry his History of the Civil Wars 
through the period of the Triumvirate to the War of Actium 
and the Principate of Augustus: the work appears to have ended 
when the Republic went down at Philippi. That Pollio chose 
to write no further will readily be understood. As it was, his 
path was hazardous. The lava was still molten underneath. 2 
An enemy of Octavianus, Pollio had withdrawn from political 
life soon after 40 B.C., and he jealously maintained his inde¬ 
pendence. To tell the truth would have been inexpedient; and 
adulation was repugnant to his character. Another eminent 
historian was also constrained to omit the period of the 
Triumvirate when he observed that he could not treat his 
subject with freedom and with veracity. It w r as no other than 
Claudius, a pupil of Livy. 3 Ilis master had less exacting 
standards. 

The great work of Pollio has perished, save for inconsiderable 
fragments or supposed borrowings in subsequent historians. 4 
None the less, the example of Pollio and the abundance of 
historical material (contemporary or going back to contem¬ 
porary sources, often biased, it is true, but admitting criticism, 
interpretation, or disbelief) may encourage the attempt to record 
the story of the Roman Revolution and its sequel, the Princi¬ 
pate of Caesar Augustus, in a fashion that has now become un- 

1 Pollio’s three letters to Cicero are valuable documents {Ad Jam. io, 31 3), 
especially the first, where he writes (§ 2 f.): ‘natura autem mca et studia trahunt 
me ad pacis et libertatis cupiditatem. itaque illud initium civilis belli saepe deflevi; 
cum vero non liceret mihi nullius partis esse, quia utrubique magnos inimicos habe- 
bam, ea castra fugi, in quibus plane tuturn me ab insidiis inimici scicbam non 
futurum; compulsus eo, quo minime volebam, ne in extremis essem, plane pericula 
non dubitanter adii. Caesarem vero, quod me in tanta fortuna modo cognitum 
vetustissimorum familiarium loco habuit, dilexi summa cum pietate et fide.’ 

2 Horace, Odes 2, 1, 6 ff.: 

periculosae plenum opus aleae 
tractas et incedis per ignis 
suppositos cineri doloso. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Claudius 41,2. 

4 For the fullest discussion of Pollio’s Histories and their traces in subsequent 
works, see E. Kornemann, JahrbiXcher fiir cl. Phil., Supplementband xxn (1896), 
557 ff- 




INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 7 

conventiona 1 , from the Republican and Antonian side. The 
adulatory or the uncritical may discover in this design a deprecia¬ 
tion of Augustus: his ability and greatness will all the more sharply 
be revealed by unfriendly presentation. 

But it is not enough to redeem Augustus from panegyric and 
revive the testimony of the vanquished cause. That would 
merely substitute one form of biography for another. At its 
worst, biography is flat and schematic: at the best, it is often 
baffled by the hidden discords of human nature. Moreover, 
undue insistence upon the character and exploits of a single 
person invests history with dramatic unity at the expense of truth. 
However talented and powerful in himself, the Roman statesman 
cannot stand alone, without allies, without a following. That axiom 
holds both for the political dynasts of the closing age of the Republic 
and for their last sole heir—the rule of Augustus was the rule 
of a party, and in certain aspects his Principate was a syndicate. 
In truth, the one term presupposes the other. The career of 
the revolutionary leader is fantastic and unreal if tola without 
some indication of the composition of the faction he led, of the 
personality, actions and influence of the principal among his 
partisans. In all ages, whatever the form and name of govern¬ 
ment, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy 
lurks behind the facade; and Roman history, Republican or 
Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, 
diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned 
again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents 
of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the 
government of the New State. 

It will therefore be expedient and salutary to investigate, not 
merely the origin and growth of the Caesarian party, but also 
the vicissitudes of the whole ruling class over a long period 
of years, in the attempt to combine and adapt that cumbrous 
theme to a consecutive narrative of events. Nor is it only the 
biography of Augustus that shall be sacrificed for the gain of 
history. Pompeius, too, and Caesar must be reduced to due sub¬ 
ordination. After Sulla’s ordinances, a restored oligarchy of the 
nobiles held office at Rome. Pompeius fought against it; but 
Pompeius, for all his power, had to come to terms. Nor could 
Caesar have ruled without it. Coerced by Pompeius and sharply 
repressed by Caesar, the aristocracy was broken at Philippi. 
The parties of Pompeius and of Caesar had hardly been strong 
or coherent enough to seize control of the whole State and form 



8 INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 

a government. That was left to Caesar’s heir, at the head of a 
new coalition, built up from the wreckage of other groups and 
superseding them all. 

The policy and acts of the Roman People were guided by an 
oligarchy, its annals were written in an oligarchic spirit. History 
arose from the inscribed record of consulates and triumphs of 
the nobiles , from the transmitted memory of the origins, alliances 
and feuds of their families; and history never belied its begin¬ 
nings. Of necessity the conception was narrow—only the ruling 
order could have any history at all and only the ruling city: 
only Rome, not Italy. 1 In the Revolution the power of the old 
governing class was broken, its composition transformed. Italy 
and the non-political orders in society triumphed over Rome 
and the Roman aristocracy. Yet the old framework and cate¬ 
gories subsist: a monarchy rules through an oligarchy. 

Subject and treatment indicated, it remains to choose a date 
for the beginning. The breach between Pompeius and Caesar 
and the outbreak of war in 49 b.c. might appear to open the 
final act in the fall of the Roman Republic. That was not the 
opinion of their enemy Cato: he blamed the original alliance of 
Pompeius and Caesar. 2 When Pollio set out to narrate the 
history of the Roman Revolution he began, not with the crossing 
of the Rubicon, but with the compact of 60 B.c., devised by the 
political dynasts Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar to control the 
State and secure the domination of the most powerful of their 
number. 

Motum ex Metello consule civicum 
bellique causas et vitia et modos 
ludumque Fortunae gravisque 
principum amicitias et arma 
nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus. 3 

That formulation deserved and found wide acceptance. 4 The 
menace of despotic power hung over Rome like a heavy cloud 
for thirty years from the Dictatorship of Sulla to the Dictatorship 
of Caesar. It was the age of Pompeius the Great. Stricken by 
the ambitions, the alliances and the feuds of the dynasts, mon¬ 
archic faction-leaders as they were called, the Free State perished 

1 Thus Tacitus, writing imperial history in the spirit and categories of the 
Republic, begins his Annals with the words ‘urbem Romam’. 

2 Plutarch, Caesar 13; Pompeius 47. 

3 Horace, Odes 2, 1, 1 ff. 

4 Livy, Per. 103; Lucan, Pharsalia 1, 84 ff.; Florus 2, 13, 8 ff.; Velleius 2, 44, 1. 



INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY 9 

in their open strife. 1 Augustus is the heir of Caesar or of Pom- 
peius, as you will. Caesar the Dictator bears the heavier blame 
for civil war. In truth, Pompeius was no better—‘occultior non 
melior\ 2 And Pompeius is in the direct line of Marius, Cinna 
and Sulla. 3 It all seems inevitable, as though destiny ordained 
the succession of military tyrants. 

In these last and fatal convulsions, disaster came upon disaster, 
ever more rapid. Three of the monarchic principes fell by the 
sword. Five civil wars and more in twenty years drained the 
life-blood of Rome and involved the whole world in strife 
and anarchy, Gaul and the West stood firm; but the horsemen 
of the Parthians were seen in Syria and on the western shore 
of Asia. The Empire of the Roman People, perishing of its 
own greatness, threatened to break and dissolve into separate 
kingdoms—or else a renegade, coming like a monarch out of 
the East, would subjugate Rome to an alien rule. Italy suffered 
devastation and sacking of cities, with proscription and murder 
of the best men; for the ambitions of the dynasts provoked war 
between class and class. Naked power prevailed. 4 

The anger of Heaven against the Roman People was revealed 
in signal and continuous calamities: the gods had no care for 
virtue or justice, but intervened only to punish. 5 Against the 
blind impersonal forces that drove the world to its doom, human 
forethought or human act was powerless. Men believed only in 
destiny and the inexorable stars. 

In the beginning kings ruled at Rome, and in the end, as was 
fated, it came round to monarchy again. Monarchy brought 
concord. 6 During the Civil Wars every party and every leader 
professed to be defending the cause of liberty and of peace. 
Those ideals were incompatible. When peace came, it was the 
peace of despotism. ‘Cum domino pax ista venit.’ 7 

1 Appian, BC i, 2, 7: hvvaarelat re rfcrav rjbr) Kara iroAAd Kal araaiapxoL 

fiovapx^Kot. 2 Tacitus, Hist. 2, 38. 

3 Tacitus, Ann . 1,1; Hist. 2, 38. 

4 Sallust, Hist. 1, 18 m: ‘et relatus inconditae olim vitae mos, ut omne ius in 
viribus esset’; Tacitus, Ann. 3, 28: ‘exim continua per viginti annos discordia, non 
mos, non ius.* 

5 Tacitus, Hist. 1,3: ‘non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem.’ 
Cf. Lucan, Pharsalia 4, 207; 7, 455. 

6 Appian, BC 1,6, 24: uiSe p,er e#c uraaemv ttoikLXujv j) rroXirela ' Pojpalois is 
o^iovoiav Kal piovapxlav nepUarr]. 

7 Lucan, Pharsalia 1, 670. 



II. THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

W HEN the patricians expelled the kings from Rome, they 
were careful to retain the kingly power, vested in a pair of 
annual magistrates; and though compelled in time to admit the 
plebeians to political equality, certain of the great patrician 
houses, Valerii, Fabii and Cornelii, none the less held in 
turn a dynastic and almost regal position. 1 The Senate again, 
being a permanent body, arrogated to itself power, and after 
conceding sovranty to the assembly of the People was able to 
frustrate its exercise. The two consuls remained at the head of 
the government, but policy was largely directed by ex-consuls. 
These men ruled, as did the Senate, not in virtue of written law, 
but through auctoritas ; and the name of principes civitatis came 
suitably to be applied to the more prominent of the consulars. 2 

The consulate did not merely confer power upon its holder 
and dignity for life: it ennobled a family for ever. Within the 
Senate, itself an oligarchy, a narrow ring, namely the nobiles, or 
descendants of consular houses, whether patrician or plebeian 
in origin, regarded the supreme magistracy as the prerogative of 
birth and the prize of ambition. 3 

The patricians continued to wield an influence beyond all 
relation to their number; and the nobiles , though a wider class, 
formed yet a distinct minority in the Senate. The nobiles are 
predominant: yet in the last generation of the Free State, after 
the ordinances of Sulla the Dictator, there were many senators 
whose fathers had held only the lower magistracies or even new¬ 
comers, sons of Roman knights. Of the latter, in the main deriving 
from the local aristocracies, the holders of property, power and 
office in the towns of Italy, the proportion was clearly much 
higher than has sometimes been imagined. Of a total of six 

1 Along with Claudii, Aemilii and Manlii they formed an aristocracy within the 
patriciate itself, being the so-called gentes maiores. On the patrician gentes , cf. 
Mommsen, Romische Forschungen i 2 (1864), 69 ff. 

2 M. Gelzer, Die Nobilitdt der r. Repubhk (1912), 35 ff.; A. Gwosdz, Der Begriff 
des r. princeps (Diss. Breslau, 1933). 

3 Gelzer’s definition ( Die Nobilitat , 21 ff.) is here accepted. ‘Nobilis’ may not 
be quite a technical term, but its connotation is pretty clear. (As Gelzer shows, 
Cicero, with all the goodwill in the world, cannot attribute nobilitas to C. Fonteius 
and L. Licinius Murena, descendants of ancient and famous houses of praetorian 
rank.) Gelzer’s lucid explanation of the character of Roman society and Roman 
politics, namely a nexus of personal obligations, is here followed closely. 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY u 

hundred senators the names of some four hundred can be identi¬ 
fied, many of them obscure or casually known. 1 The remainder 
have left no record of activity or fame in a singularly well- 
documented epoch of history. 

Not mere admission to the Senate but access to the consulate 
was jealously guarded by the nobiles. It was a scandal and a pollu¬ 
tion if a man without ancestors aspired to the highest magistracy 
of the Roman Republic 2 —he might rise to the praetorship but no 
higher, save by a rare combination of merit, industry and pro¬ 
tection. The nobilitas did not, it is true, stand like a solid ram¬ 
part to bar all intruders. No need for that—the conservative 
Roman voter could seldom be induced to elect a man whose 
name had not been known for centuries as a part of the history 
of the Republic. Hence the novus homo (in the strict sense of the 
term the first member of a family to secure the consulate and 
consequent ennoblement) was a rare phenomenon at Rome. 3 
Before the sovran people he might boast how he had led them to 
victory in a mighty contest and had broken into the citadel of the 
nobility: 4 he was less assertive in the Senate, more candid to his 
intimate friends. There was no breach in the walls—a faction 
among the nobiles had opened the gates. Cicero would have pre¬ 
served both dignity and peace of mind had not ambition and 
vanity blinded him to the true causes of his own elevation. 5 

The political life of the Roman Republic was stamped and 
swayed, not by parties and programmes of a modern and parlia¬ 
mentary character, not by the ostensible opposition between 
Senate and People, Optimates and Populates , nobiles and novi 
homines , but by the strife for power, wealth and glory. The 
contestants were the nobiles among themselves, as individuals or 
in groups, open in the elections and in the courts of law, or 
masked by secret intrigue. As in its beginning, so in its last 
generation, the Roman Commonwealth, ‘res publica populi 

1 P. Willems, Le Senat de la republique romaine I (1878), 427 II., established this 
total for the Senate of 55 b.c. 

2 Sallust, BJ 63, 6 (cf. BC 23, 6): ‘etiam turn alios magistratus plebs, con- 
sulatum nobilita9 inter se per manus tradebat. novos nemo tarn clarus neque tarn 
egregiis factis erat, quin indignus illohonore et is quasi pollutus haberetur.’ Com¬ 
pare the remarks of L. Sergius Catilina, a noble and a patrician : ‘quod non digno? 
homines honore honestatos videbam* (BC 35, 3); ‘M. 7"ullius, inquilinus civis 
urbis Romae’ (ib. 31, 7). 

3 Cf. H. Strasburger, P-W xvii, 1223 ff. 

4 Cicero, De lege agraria 11, 3 ff. 

5 The manual on electioneering written by Q. Cicero (the Commentariolurr 
petitionis) reveals much of the truth about his candidature. 



12 THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

Romani', was a name; a feudal order of society still survived in 
a city-state and governed an empire. Noble families determined 
the history of the Republic, giving their names to its epochs. 
There was an age of the Scipiones: not less of the Metelli. 

Though concealed by craft or convention, the arcana imperii of 
the nobilitas cannot evade detection. 1 Three weapons the nobiles 
held and wielded, the family, money and the political alliance 
(<amicitia or factio, as it was variously labelled). The wide and 
remembered ramifications of the Roman noble clan won concen¬ 
trated support for the rising politician. The nobiles were dynasts, 
their daughters princesses. Marriage with a well-connected 
heiress therefore became an act of policy and an alliance of 
powers, more important than a magistracy, more binding than 
any compact of oath or interest. Not that women were merely 
the instruments of masculine policy. Far from it: the daughters 
of the great houses commanded political influence in their own 
right, exercising a power beyond the reach of many a senator. 
Of such dominating forces behind the phrases and the facade of 
constitutional government the most remarkable was Servilia, 
Cato’s half-sister, Brutus’ mother—and Caesar’s mistress. 

The noble was a landed proprietor, great or small. But money 
was scarce and he did not wish to sell his estates: yet he required 
ready cash at every turn, to support the dignity of his station,to 
flatter the populace with magnificence of games and shows, to 
bribe voters and jurors, to subsidize friends and allies. Hence 
debts, corruption and venality at Rome, oppression and extor¬ 
tion in the provinces. Crassus was in the habit of observing that 
nobody should be called rich who was not able to maintain an 
army on his income. 2 Crassus should have known. 

The competition was fierce and incessant. Family influence 
and wealth did not alone suffice. FYom ambition or for safety, 
politicians formed compacts. Amicitia was a weapon of politics, 
not a sentiment based on congeniality. Individuals capture 
attention and engross history, but the most revolutionary changes 
in Roman politics were the work of families or of a few men. 
A small party, zealous for reform—or rather, perhaps, from 
hostility to Scipio Aemilianus—put up the tribune Ti. Sempro- 
nius Gracchus. The Metelli backed Sulla. The last dynastic 

1 Compare Miinzer’s comments on the deliberate concealment by the nobiles , 
for their own ends, of the true character of Roman political life, Rdmische Adels - 
parteien u. Adehfamilien (1920), 427 f. 

2 Cicero, De off. 1, 25 ; in a milder form, Pliny, NH 33, 134; Plutarch, Crassus 2. 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 13 

compact in 60 b.c. heralded the end of the Free State; and a 
re-alignment of forces precipitated war and revolution ten years 
later. 

Amicitia presupposes inimicitia, inherited or acquired: a states¬ 
man could not win power and influence without making many 
enemies. The novas homo had to tread warily. Anxious not to 
offend a great family, he must shun where possible the role of 
prosecutor in the law-courts and win gratitude by the defence even 
of notorious malefactors. The nohilis , however, would take pride 
in his feuds. 1 Yet he had ever to be on the alert, jealous to guard 
his dignitas , that is, rank, prestige and honour, against the attacks 
of his personal enemies. 2 The plea of security and self-defence 
against aggression was often invoked by a politician when he 
embarked upon a course of unconstitutional action. 

The dynast required allies and supporters, not from his own 
class only. The sovran people of a free republic conferred its 
favours on whom it pleased. 3 Popularity with the plebs was 
therefore essential. It was possessed in abundance both by 
Caesar and by his bitter enemy, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus. To 
win a following at elections, to manage bribery, intimidation or 
rioting, the friendly offices of lowly agents such as influential 
freedmen were not despised. Above all, it was necessary to con¬ 
ciliate the second order in state and society, the Roman knights, 
converted into a ruinous political force by the tribune C. Grac¬ 
chus when he set them in control of the law-courts and in op¬ 
position to the Senate. The Equites belonged, it is true, to the same 
social class as the great bulk of the senators: the contrast lay in 
rank and prestige. 

The knights preferred comfort, secret power and solid profit 
to the burdens, the dangers and the extravagant display of a 
senator’s life. Cicero, a knight’s son from a small town, suc¬ 
cumbed to his talents and his ambition. Not so T. Pomponius 
Atticus, the great banker. Had Atticus so chosen, wealth, repute 
and influence could easily have procured a seat in the Senate. 4 
But Atticus did not wish to waste his money on senseless luxury 


1 Tacitus, Dial. 40, 1: ‘ipsa inimicitiarum gloria.’ 

2 On this concept, H. Wegehaupt, Die Bedeutung u. Amvendung von dignitas 
(Diss. Breslau, 1932): in the sense of ‘personal honour’, ib. 36 ff. 

3 Cicero, Pro Sestio 137. Office was accessible to the ‘industria ac virtus’ of 
all citizens. There was not even a property-qualification. The letter of the law 
likewise knew no distinction between rich and poor. 

4 Nepos, Vita Attici 6, 2: ‘honores non petiit, cum ei paterent propter vel 
gratiam vel dignitatem.’ 



i 4 THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

or electoral corruption, to risk station, fortune and life in futile 
political contests. Averse from ambition and wedded to quiet, the 
knights could claim no title of civic virtue, no share in the splen¬ 
dour and pride of the governing class. For that surrender they 
were scorned by senators. They did not mind. 1 Some lived 
remote and secure in the enjoyment of hereditary estates, content 
with the petty dignity of municipal office in the towns of Italy. 
Others, however, grasped at the spoils of empire, as publicani in 
powerful companies farming the taxes of the provinces and as 
bankers dominating finance, commerce and industry. The 
publicani were the fine flower of the equestrian order, the orna¬ 
ment and bulwark of the Roman State. 2 Cicero never spoke 
against these ‘ homines honestissimi ’ and never let them down: they 
were in the habit of requiting his services by loans or legacies. 3 

The gains of finance went into land. Men of substance and 
repute grew yet richer from the spoils of the provinces, bought the 
farms of small peasants, encroached upon public land, seized 
through mortgages the ancestral property of senators, and thus 
built up large estates in Italy. Among senators were great holders 
of property like Pompeius and Ahenobarbus with whole armies 
of tenants or slaves, and financial magnates like Crassus. But the 
wealth of knights often outstripped many an ancient senatorial 
family, giving them a greater power than the nominal holders 
of dignity and office. 4 

Equestrian or senatorial, the possessing classes stood for the 
existing order and were suitably designated as boni . The main¬ 
stay of this sacred army of the wealthy was clearly the financiers. 
Many senators were their partners, allies or advocates. Concord 
and firm alliance between Senate and knights would therefore 
arrest revolution—or even reform, for these men could not be 
expected to have a personal interest in redistributing property 
or changing the value of money. The financiers were strong 
enough to ruin any politician or general who sought to secure fair 
treatment for provincials or reform in the Roman State through 
the re-establishment of the peasant farmer. Among the victims 

1 Sallust, Hist. 1,55, 9 M : ‘ilia quies ct otium cum libertate quae multi probi 
potius quam laborem cum honoribus capessebant’; Cicero, Pro Cluentio 153; Pro 
Rabirio Postumo 13. 

2 Cicero, Pro Plancio 23 : ‘flos enim equitum Romanorum, ornamentum civitatis, 
firmamentum rei publicae publicanorum ordine continetur.’ 

3 For example, Fufidius, an ‘eques Romanus ornatissimus’, left money to Cicero 
(Ad Att. 11, 14, 3). On the activities of this man in Macedonia, cf. In Pisonem 86. 

4 Lucullus, owner of a palace at Tusculum, pointed out that he had a knight and 
a freedman for neighbours (Cicero, De legibus 3, 30). 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 15 

of their enmity will be reckoned Lucullus, Catilina and 
Gabinius. 

It was no accident, no mere manifestation of Roman conser¬ 
vatism or snobbery, that the leaders of revolution in Rome were 
usually impoverished or idealistic nobles, that they found sup¬ 
port in the higher ranks of the aristocracy rather than in the 
lower. It is all too easy to tax the Roman nobility in the last 
epoch of its rule with vice and corruption, obscurantism and 
oppression. The knights must not be left out of the indictment. 
Among the old nobility persisted a tradition of service to the 
State that could transcend material interests and combine class- 
loyalty with a high ideal of Roman patriotism and imperial 
responsibility. Not so among the financiers. 

The Roman constitution was a screen and a sham. Of the 
forces that lay behind or beyond it, next to the noble families 
the knights were the most important. Through alliance with 
groups of financiers, through patronage exercised in the law- 
courts and ties of personal allegiance contracted in every walk of 
life, the political dynast might win influence not merely in Rome 
but in the country-towns of Italy and in regions not directly 
concerned with Roman political life. Whether he held authority 
from the State or not, he could thus raise an army on his own 
initiative and resources. 

The soldiers, now recruited from the poorest classes in Italy, 
were ceasing to feel allegiance to the State; military service was 
for livelihood, or from constraint, not a natural and normal part 
of a citizen’s duty. The necessities of a world-empire and the 
ambition of generals led to the creation of extraordinary com¬ 
mands in the provinces. The general had to be a politician, for 
his legionaries were a host of clients, looking to their leader for 
spoil in war and estates in Italy when their campaigns were over. 
But not veterans only were attached to his cause—from his 
provincial commands the dynast won to his allegiance and per¬ 
sonal following (clienteld) towns and whole regions, provinces 
and nations, kings and tetrarchs. 

Such were the resources which ambition required to win power 
in Rome and direct the policy of the imperial Republic as consul 
or as one of the principes. Cicero lacked the full equipment. He 
imagined that oratory and intrigue would suffice. A programme, 
it is true, he developed, negative but by no means despicable. 1 

1 H. Strasburger, Concordia Ordinum y Diss. Frankfurt (Leipzig, 1931). A 
cardinal passage is Pro Sestio 97 f., on the definition of ‘optimus quisque*. 



16 THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

It was an alliance of interest and sentiment to combat the forces 
of dissolution represented by the army-commanders and their 
political agents. It took shape at first in his consulate as concordia 
ordinum between Senate and knights against the improbi , but 
later widened to a consensus omnium bonorum and embraced tot a 
Italia . But it was an ideal rather than a programme: there was 
no Ciceronian party. The Roman politician had to be the leader 
of a faction. Cicero fell short of that eminence both when a consul 
and when a consular, or senior statesman, through lack of family- 
connexions and clientela. 

Within the framework of the Roman constitution, beside the 
consulate, was another instrument of power, the tribunate, an 
anomalous historical survival given new life by the party of the 
Gracchi and converted into a means of direct political action, 
negative with the veto, positive with the initiation of laws. The 
use of this weapon in the interests of reform or of personal 
ambition became a mark of the politicians who arrogated to them¬ 
selves the name of populares —often sinister and fraudulent, no 
better than their rivals, the men in power, who naturally invoked 
the specious and venerable authority of the Senate. 1 But there 
were to be found in their ranks a few sincere reformers, enemies 
of misrule and corruption, liberal in outlook and policy. More¬ 
over, the tribunate could be employed for conservative ends by 
aristocratic demagogues. 2 

With the Gracchi all the consequences of empire—social, 
economic and political—broke loose in the Roman State, in¬ 
augurating a century of revolution. The traditional contests of 
the noble families were complicated, but not abolished, by the 
strife of parties largely based on economic interest, of classes 
even, and of military leaders. Before long the Italian allies were 
dragged into Roman dissensions. The tribune M. Livius Drusus 
hoped to enlist them on the side of the dominant oligarchy. He 
failed, and they rose against Rome in the name of freedom and 
justice. On the Bellum Italicum supervened civil war. The party 
led by Marius, Cinna and Carbo was defeated. L. Cornelius 

1 Sallust, BC 38, 3: ‘namquc, uti paucis verum absolvam, post ilia tempora 
quicurnque rem publicam agitavere, honcstis norninibus, alii sicuti populi iura 
defenderent, pars quo senatus auctoritas maxuma foret, bonum publicum simu- 
lantes pro sua quisque potentia certabant.’ The passage refers to the generation 
after 70 B.c. Cf.. however, no less pessimistic remarks about an earlier period, 
Hist. 1, 12 m . 

2 There was no party of the populates ; cf. II. Strasburger, in the articles ‘Opti- 
mates’ and ‘Populares’ (P-W, forthcoming). 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 17 

Sulla prevailed and settled order at Rome again through violence 
and bloodshed. Sulla decimated the knights, muzzled the 
tribunate, and curbed the consuls. But even Sulla could not 
abolish his own example and preclude a successor to his 
domination. 

Sulla resigned power after a brief tenure. Another year and 
he was dead (78 B.C.). The government which he established 
lasted for nearly twenty years. Its rule was threatened at the 
outset by a turbulent and ambitious consul, M. Aemilius Lepidus, 
claiming to restore the rights of the tribunes and supported by 
a resurgence of the defeated causes in Italy. The tribunes were 
only a pretext, but the Marian party—the proscribed and the 
dispossessed—was a permanent menace. The long and compli¬ 
cated war in Italy had barely ended. The Samnites, Sulla’s 
enemy and Rome’s, had been extirpated ; and the other Sabellic 
peoples of the Apennine were broken and reduced. But Etruria, 
despoiled and resentful, rose again for Lepidus against the 
Roman oligarchy. 1 

Lepidus was suppressed. But disorders continued, even to a 
rising of the slaves in southern Italy. Then a coup d'etat of two 
generals (70 B.C.), restoring the tribunate, destroyed Sulla’s 
system but left the nobiles nominally in power. They were 
able to repel and crush the attempt of the patrician demagogue 
L. Sergius Catilina to raise a revolution in Italy—for Catilina 
attacked property as well as privilege. The government of the 
nobiles , supported by a sacred union of the possessing classes, by 
the influence of their clientela among the plebs and by due sub¬ 
servience towards the financial interests, might have perpetuated 
in Rome and Italy its harsh and hopeless rule. The Empire 
broke it. 

The repercussions of the ten years’ war in Italy echoed 
over all the world. The Senate was confronted by continuous 
warfare in the provinces and on the frontiers of its wide and 
cumbersome dominion—against Sertorius and the last sur¬ 
vivors of the Marian faction in Spain, against the great Mithri- 
dates and against the Pirates. Lack of capacity among the 
principal members of the ruling group, or, more properly, per¬ 
sonal ambition and political intrigue, constrained them, in 
mastering these manifold dangers, to derogate from oligarchic 
practice and confer exorbitant military power on a single general, 
to the salvation of Rome’s empire and to their own ruin. 

1 Sallust, Hist. 1, 67 m; 69; 77, 6, &c. 



18 THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

As an oligarchy is not a figment of political theory, a specious 
fraud, or a mere term of abuse, but very precisely a collection of 
individuals, its shape and character, so far from fading away on 
close scrutiny, at once stands out, solid and manifest. In any 
age of the history of Republican Rome about twenty or thirty 
men, drawn from a dozen dominant families, hold a monopoly 
of office and power. From time to time, families rise and fall: 
as Rome’s rule extends in Italy, the circle widens from which 
the nobility is recruited and renewed. None the less, though 
the composition of the oligarchy is slowly transformed with the 
transformation of the Roman State, the manner and fashion of 
dynastic politics changes but little; and though noble houses 
suffered defeat in the struggle for power, and long eclipse, they 
were saved from extinction by the primitive tenacity of the 
Roman family and the pride of their own traditions. They 
waited in patience to assert their ancient predominance. 

When the rule of the Etruscan Tarquinii collapsed, the 
earliest heirs to their power were the Valerii and the Fabii. 1 
To the Fasti of the Roman Republic these great houses each 
contributed forty-five consuls, exceeded only by the patrician 
Cornelii with their numerous branches. Sulla the Dictator, him¬ 
self a patrician and a Cornelius, did his best to restore the 
patriciate, sadly reduced in political power in the previous genera¬ 
tion, not so much through Marius as from internal disasters and 
the rise of dynastic houses of the plebeian nobility. But neither 
Valerii nor Fabii stand in the forefront of his oligarchy. The 
predominance of the Valerii had passed long ago, and the Fabii 
had missed a generation in the consulate. 2 The Fabii and the 
main line of the Cornelii Scipiones had been saved from extinc¬ 
tion only by taking in adoption sons of the resplendent Aemilii. 3 
But the power of the Cornelii was waning. Their strength now 
lay in the inferior Lentuli, whose lack of dangerous enterprise 
was compensated by domestic fertility and a tenacious instinct 
for survival. 

Some of the patrician clans like the Furii, whose son Ca- 
millus saved Rome from the Gauls, had vanished utterly by 
now, or at least could show no more consuls. The Sulpicii 
and Manlii had lost prominence. The Servilii, old allies of the 

1 Miinzer, RA t 53 ff. 

2 No Fabius was consul between 116 and 45 B.c. 

3 Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus (cos. 145 B.c.) and P. Cornelius Scipio 
Aemilianus (cos. 147, cos. 11 134). The Fabii also adopted a Servilius (the 
consul of 142). 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 19 

Aemilii, ambitious, treacherous, and often incompetent, were 
depressed by a recent catastrophe. 1 So, too, were the Aemilii: 2 
but neither house resigned its claim to primacy. The Claudii, 
however, persisted, unchanged in their alarming versatility. 
There was no epoch of Rome’s history but could show a 
Claudius intolerably arrogant towards the nobiles his rivals, or 
grasping personal power under cover of liberal politics. There 
were two branches of their line, unequal in talent—the Pulchri 
and the Nerones. The lesser was to prevail. 

The patricians in the restored oligarchy held rank not so much 
from resources of their own as from alliance with houses of the 
plebeian aristocracy. The greatest of those families had earned 
or confirmed their title of nobility by command in war against 
the Samnites and the Carthaginians: some had maintained it 
since then, others had lapsed for a time. The Fulvii, the Sempronii 
and the Livii were almost extinct; and the Claudii Marcelli, 
in abrupt decadence, had lacked a consul for two generations. 3 
But there was a prominent Lutatius, whose name recalled a 
great naval battle and whose father had defeated the Cimbri; 
there were several families of the Licinii, great soldiers and 
distinguished orators, not to mention other houses of repute. 4 5 
The Marcii, in ancient dignity rivals to the patriciate, now 
stood high again, with several branches. L. Marcius Philip- 
pus, eloquent, alert and pliable, resisted the revolutionary 
designs of M. Livius Drusus, held the censorship under the 
domination of Marius and Cinna, passed over to Sulla in the 
right season, and guided by craft and counsel the first stormy 
years of the renovated oligarchy. 3 Among other eminent houses 
of the plebeian nobility in the Marian faction were the Junii 
and the Domitii, 6 who became firm supporters of the new order. 

1 That of Q. Servilius Caepio, cos . 106; cf. Miinzer, RA y 285 ff. 

2 Cf. Miinzer, RA 305 if. The patriciate was in very low water in the last 
decade of the second century B.c. 

3 Ever since M. Marcellus, cos. 111 152 b.c. 

4 For example the Aurclii Cottae and the Octavii (with two consuls each in the 
years 76 74 B.c.), the Calpurnii, the Cassii and the Antonii. C. Scribonius Curio 
(ror. 76), a man of capacity and repute, came of a senatorial family that had not 
previously reached the consulate. 

5 Philippus steeled the Senate to take action against Lepidus (Sallust, Hist. 1, 
77 m) ; and he secured for Pompeius the command in Spain, not ‘pro consule’ 
but ‘pro consulibus* (Cicero, Phil. 11, 18). On his high repute as a wit, cf. Cicero, 
Brutus 173; as a gourmet, Varro, RR 3, 3, 9. For a stemma of the Marcii, P-W 
xiv, 1539. 

6 For example, M. Junius Brutus ( tr. pi. 83) and L. Junius Brutus Damasippus 
P-W x, 972 f.; 1025). Note also C. Marcius Censorinus (P-W xiv, 1550 f.) and 



20 


THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

But the core and heart of Sulla’s party and Sulla’s oligarchy 
was the powerful house of the Caecilii Metelli, whom some called 
stupid. 1 Their heraldic badge was an elephant, commemorating 
a victory against the Carthaginians. 2 The Metelli prevailed by 
their mass and by their numbers. Their sons became consuls 
by prerogative or inevitable destiny; and their daughters were 
planted out in dynastic marriages. In their great age the Metelli 
overshadowed the Roman State, holding twelve consulates, 
censorships or triumphs in as many years. 3 Impaired by the 
rise and domination of the party of Marius, the Metelli got 
power and influence again from the alliance with Sulla. Q. 
Metellus Pius led an army to victory for Sulla and became 
consul with him in 80 B.c. The Dictator himself had taken a 
Metella to wife. The next pair of consuls (P. Servilius Vatia 
and Appius Claudius Pulcher) furnished a suitable and visible 
inauguration of the restored aristocracy, being the son and the 
husband of women of the Metelli. 4 

The dynasty of the Metelli could not rule alone. Both the 
framework and the bulk of the governing coalition is revealed 
in the relations and alliances between that house and two other 
groups. The first is the Claudii: in addition to three sons, Ap. 
Claudius Pulcher left three daughters, whose birth and beauty 
gained them advantageous matches and an evil repute. 5 Second 
and more important by far is that enigmatic faction soon to be 
led by a man who never became consul. Its origins lie at the very 
heart of Roman dynastic politics. The tribune M. Livius Drusus, 
whose activities did so much to precipitate the Bellum lialicum, 
left no son of his blood. His sister was twice married, to a 

Cn. Dornitius Ahcnobarbus (P-W v, 1327 f.), the brother of the consul of 54. 
Ahenobarbus had married a daughter of Cinna (Orosius 5, 24, 16). 

1 As Scipio Aemilianus said of one of them, ‘si quintum pareret mater eius, 
asinum fuisse parituram’ (Cicero, De oratore 2, 267). 

2 BMC , R. Rep. 1, 155. 

J Velleius 2, 11, 3. On another calculation, six consulates in fifteen years 
(123 109 b.c.). Q. Metellus Macedonicus (cos. 143) had four consular sons. For 
the stemma, see Table I at end. 

4 Miinzer, RA t 302 ff.; J. Carcopino, Sylla ou la monarchic manquee (1931), 
120 ff. Sulla married Caecilia Metella, daughter of Delmaticus and previously the 
wife of M. Aemilius Scaurus, the princeps senatus. Servilius’ mother was a sister of 
Balearicus, and Ap. Fulcher’s wife was his daughter. The table in Miinzer, RA, 304, 
shows these relationships clearly. Cf. Table I at end. 

5 The sons were Ap. Claudius Pulcher (cos. 54), C. Claudius Pulcher ( pr . 56) 
and P. Clodius Pulcher (tr. pi. 58). Of the daughters, one was married to Q. 
Marcius Rex (cos. 68), the second and best known to Q. Metellus Celer (cos. 60). 
The youngest Clodia was the wife of L. Licinius Lucullus (cos. 74), who divorced 
her, making shocking allegations (Plutarch, Lucullus 34; Cicero, ProMilone 73, &c.). 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 21 

Servilius Caepio and to a Porcius, whence double issue, five 
children of diverse note, among them the great political lady 
Servilia and the redoubtable leader of the oligarchy in its last 
struggles, M. Porcius Cato. 1 

With these three groups were linked in some fashion or other 
almost all the chief members of the government, the principes 
viri of note during the first decade of its existence. To the old 
and wily Philippus in the direction of public affairs succeeded two 
men of contrary talent and repute, Q. Lutatius Catulus and Q. 
Hortensius, related by marriage. 2 The virtue and integrity of 
Catulus, rare in that age, earned general recognition: brilliance and 
vigour were lacking. Hortensius, dominant in law-courts and 
Senate, flaunted pomp and decoration in his life as in his oratory. 
Luxurious without taste or measure, the advocate got a name for 
high living and dishonest earnings, for his cellar, his game-park 
and his fish-ponds. 3 

Of the Senate’s generals, Metcllus Pius contended for long 
years in Spain, and Creticus usurped a cognomen for petty exploits 
in a pirate-ridden island. Nor were the kinsmen of the Metelli 
inactive. Ap. Pulcher fought in Macedonia, where he died; P. 
Servilius with better fortune for four years in Cilicia. Most glorious 
of all were the two Luculli, sons of a Metella and first cousins of 
Metellus Pius. 4 The elder, trained in eastern warfare under Sulla 
and highly trusted by him, led armies through Asia and shattered 
the power of Mithridates. Combining integrity with capacity, 
he treated the provincials in a fair and merciful fashion, incurring 
the deadly hatred of Roman financiers. The younger Lucullus, 
proconsul of Macedonia, carried the arms of Rome in victory 
through Thrace to the shore of Pontus and the mouth of the 
river Danube. 

A little apart stands M. Licinius Crassus, who commanded 

1 See, above all, the researches of Miinzer, RA, 328 ff. For the stemma, see 
Table II at end. The other children were Q. Servilius Caepio (P-W 11 A, 1775 ff.), 
Servilia, the second Wife of L. Lucullus (Plutarch, Lucullus 38, cf. P-W 11 A, 1821), 
and Porcia, wife of L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 54). 

2 The sister of Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 78) was married to Q. Hortensius 
(cos. 69). For the stemma, Miinzer, RA , 224 ; for connexions of Catulus with the 
Domitii Ahenobarbi and the Servilii, P-W xm, 2073 f. 

3 For details of his opulence and villas, P-W vm, 2475. Fish-ponds, Varro, 
RR 3, 17, 5; a private zoological garden, ib. 3, 13, 2; ten thousand barrels of wine 
left to his heir, Pliny, NH 14, 96. 

4 L. Licinius Lucullus (cos. 74) and his brother Marcus (cos. 73), who was 
adopted by a M. Terentius Varro, cf. P-W xm, 414 f. L. Lucullus was married 
first to a Clodia, then to a Servilia, cf. above, n. 1 and p. 20, n. 5. The wife of 
M. Terentius Varro Lucullus is not known. 

B 


4482 



22 


THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

the right wing when Sulla destroyed the Samnite army at the 
Battle of the Colline Gate. The son of a competent orator—and 
assiduous himself as an advocate, though not brilliant—cautious 
and crafty in habit, he might seem destined by wealth, family, 
and paramount influence in the Senate to sustain the part of a 
great conservative statesman in the tradition of Philippus; and 
he formed a connexion with the Metelli. 1 The lust of power, 
that prime infirmity of the Roman noble, impelled him to 
devious paths and finally to dangerous elevations. 

Such were the men who directed in war and peace the govern¬ 
ment after Sulla, owing primacy to birth and wealth, linked by 
ties of kinship and reciprocal interest. They called themselves 
Optimales : they might properly be described, in contemporary 
definition, as a faction or gang. 2 

The ramifications of this oligarchy were pervasive, its most 
weighty decisions taken in secret, known or inferred by politicians 
of the time, but often evading historical record and baffling 
posterity. It is manifest in action on various occasions, arrayed 
in open day to defend an extortionate provincial governor, to 
attack some pestilential tribune, or to curb a general hostile to 
the government. 3 But the Oplimatcs were solid only to out¬ 
ward show and at intervals. Restored to power by a military 
despot, enriched by proscription and murder, and growing ever 
fatter on the spoil of the provinces, they lacked both principle to 
give inner coherence and courage to make the reforms that might 
save and justify the rule of class and privilege. The ten years’ 
war in Italy not merely corrupted their integrity: it broke their 
spirit. 

Certain of the earliest consuls after Sulla were old men already, 
and some died soon or disappeared. 4 Even in numbers there was 
a poor showing of consulars to guide public policy: only a few 
venerable relics, or recent consuls with birth but no weight. 

1 The family of his wife Tertulla is not known. But his elder son, M. Crassus, 
married Caecilia Metella, daughter of Creticus (ILS 881), presumably in the period 
68- 63 h.c. On the influence of Crassus with the Senate in 70 b.c., note esp. Plutarch, 
Pompeius 22: ko .1 £v fiev rfj jiuvAfj pdAXov toxvev 6 Kpacrcros, cV Oe rtp brjpup fieya 
to Ilofnrqtov k par os f}v. 

2 Cicero, De re public a 3, 23: ‘cum autem certi propter divitias aut genus aut 
aliquas opes rem publicam tenent, est factio, sed vocantur illi optiinates.’ 

3 For example, in defence of Verres or against the bills of Gabinius and Manilius. 
There was a tine rally at the prosecution of the tribune Cornelius—‘dixerunt in 
eum infesti testimonia principes civitatis qui plunmum in senatu poterant Q. 
Pfortensius, Q. Catulus, Q. Metellus Pius, M. Lucullus, M.’ Lcpidus’ (Asconius 
53 P bo Clark). 

4 Only four of the consuls of 79-75 B.c. are heard of after 74. 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 23 

After a time the most distinguished of the principes , resentful 
or inert, came to shun the duties of their estate. The vain 
Hortensius, his primacy passing, was loath to contemplate the 
oratorical triumphs of a younger rival; and L. Licinius Lucullus, 
thwarted ol his triumph for years by the machinations of his 
enemies, turned for consolation to the arts and graces of private 
leisure: he transmitted to posterity, not the memory of talent 
and integrity, but the eternal exemplar of luxury. Secluded like 
indolent monsters in their parks and villas, the great piscinarii , 
Hortensius and the two Luculli, pondered at case upon the quiet 
doctrines of Epicurus and confirmed from their own careers the 
folly of ambition, the vanity of virtue. 1 

In the decline of the older generation the sons and heirs of 
the dominant and interlocking groups of the governing party 
might assert the claims of birth and talent. There were two 
young Metelli, Celer and Nepos—in capacity no exception to 
their family. 2 Next came their cousins, the three sons of Ap. 
Pulcher. Of these Claudii, the character of the eldest was 
made no more amiable by early struggles and expedients to 
maintain the dignity of a family left in poverty and to provide 
for all his brothers and sisters; 3 the second was of little account, 
and the youngest, P. Clodius, brilliant and precocious, derived 
only the most dubious examples from the conduct of his three 
sisters and exploited without scruple the influence of their 
husbands. 4 

On the whole, when some fifteen years had elapsed since 
Sulla’s death, the predominance of the Metelli seemed to be 
passing. Leadership might therefore fall to that part of the 
oligarchy which was concentrated about the person of Cato; 
and Cato was dominated by his step-sister, a woman possessed 
of all the rapacious ambition of the patrician Servilii and ruth¬ 
less to recapture power for her house. 5 Her brother, Q. Ser- 
vilius, husband of Hortensius’ daughter, was cut off before his 

1 Evidence of the wealth and tastes of Lucullus, P-W xm, 411 f. Frequent 
complaints of Cicero about the ‘piscinarii’ in 60 b.c., e.g. Ad Att. 1, 18, 6: ‘ceteros 
iam nosti; qui ita sunt stulti ut amissa re publica piscinas suas fore salvas sperare 
videantur’; lb. 2, 9, 1: ‘de istis quidem piscinarum Tritonibus.’ 

2 Q. Metellus Celer (cos. 60) and Q. Metellus Nepos (cos. 57). 

3 Cf. Varro, RR 3, 16, 1 f. He was married to a Servilia (Ad Att. 12, 20, 2). 

4 He served in the East on the staffs of Cucullus (Plutarch, Lucullus 34) and of 
Q. Marcius Rex (Dio 36, 17, 2). He hoped to inherit from Rex (Cicero, Ad Att. 
1, 16, 10). 

5 Asconius 17 — p. 19 Clark: ‘ea porro apud Catonem maternam obtinebat 
auctoritatem.* About this woman, cf., above all, Miinzer, RA, 336 ff. 



24 THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

prime. 1 But Servilia would not be thwarted by that accident. 
She cast about for other allies. About this time Cato married 
Marcia, the granddaughter of Philippus, and gave his own sister 
Porcia to L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the cousin of Catulus, a 
young man early prominent in politics through the great estates 
in Italy and the clientela among the Roman plebs which he 
had inherited from an ambitious and demagogic parent. 2 Cato’s 
other investment showed smaller prospect of remuneration—his 
daughter’s husband, M. Calpurnius Bibulus, an honest man, a 
stubborn character, but of no great moment in politics. 3 

Roman noble houses, decadent or threatened by rivals in 
power and dignity, enlisted the vigour of novi homines , orators 
and soldiers, helping them by influence to the consulate and 
claiming their support in requital. From of old the Claudii 
were the great exponents of this policy; and the Claudii remained 
on the alert, expecting three consulates, but not unaided. 4 

Against novi homines the great families after Sulla stood with 
close ranks and forbidding aspect. M. Tullius Cicero, in the 
forefront by brilliance of oratory and industry as an advocate, 
pressed his candidature, championing all popular causes, but 
none that were hopeless or hostile to the interests of property 
and finance, and at the same time carefully soliciting the aid of 
young ?iobiles whose clientela carried many votes. 5 The oligarchy 
knew their man. They admitted Cicero to shut out Catilina. 

The consulate, gained by the successful in the forty-third 
year, marked the acme of a man’s life and often changed the 
tone of his political professions. Short of the consulate, it was 

1 Plutarch, Cato minor n (67 b.c.). The identity of his wife is inferred from 
the inscr. ILS 9460. 

2 His father, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 96), was very influential with the 
plebs when tribune in 104, then carrying a law to transfer sacerdotal elections to 
the People: he was elected pontifex maximus in the next year. The son therefore 
inherited ‘urbana gratia’ (Caesar, BC 3, 83, 1): he is described as designate to the 
consulship from birth (Ad Att. 4, 8 b, 2), already in 70 b.c. princeps iuventutis (In 
Verrem 11, 1, 139), and, in 65, an indispensable ally for Cicero’s own candidature— 
‘in quo uno maxime nititur ambitio nostra’ (Ad Att. 1, 1,4). On his huge estates 
and armies of coloni, Caesar, BC 1, 17, 4; 56, 3. 

3 ‘Sallust’, Ad Caesarem 2, 9, 1: ‘M. Bibuli fortitudo atque animi vis in consula- 
tum erupit; hcbes lingua, magis malus quam calhdus ingenio.’ On his ‘iracundia’, 
Caesar, BC 3, 16, 3. 

4 P. Clodius was an ally of Cicero against Catilina. The Claudii were presum¬ 
ably trying to capture this useful orator. Terentia, Cicero’s wife, afraid lest he 
should divorce her and marry Clodia, provoked a breach by making Cicero give 
testimony at the trial of Clodius for impiety (Plutarch, Cicero 29). 

5 Comm. pet. 6: ‘praeterea adulescentis nobilis elabora ut habeas vel ut teneas, 
studiosos quos habes.’ Cf. Ad Att. 1, 1, 4 (Ahenobarbus). 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 25 

given to few at Rome to achieve distinction, save through the 
questionable and hazardous means of the tribunate. Yet two 
men stood out in this year of another’s consulate and public 
glory, shaming the mediocrity of their elders. They were 
Caesar and Cato, diverse in habit and morals, but supremely 
great in spirit. 1 

C. Julius Caesar, of a patrician house newly arisen from long 
decay, largely by help from C. Marius, strained every nerve and 
effort through long years of political intrigue to maintain the 
dignitas of the Julii and secure the consulate in his turn. 2 His 
aunt was the wife of Marius. Caesar, who took Cinna’s daughter 
in marriage, defied Sulla when he sought to break the match. 
When pronouncing the funeral oration upon Marius’ widow, re¬ 
placing the trophies of Marius on the Capitol or advocating 
the restoration of the proscribed, Caesar spoke for family loyalty 
and for a cause. But he did not compromise his future or com¬ 
mit his allegiance for all time. Caesar possessed close kin in 
certain houses of the moderate nobility; 3 and his second wife, 
Pompeia, doubly recalled the Sullan party she was a grand¬ 
daughter of Sulla. 4 Active ambition earned a host of enemies. But 
this patrician demagogue lacked fear or scruple. Contending 
against two of th eprincipes, he won through bribery and popular 
favour the paramount office in the religion of the Roman State, 
that of pontifex maximus A The same year furnished an added 
testimony of his temper. When the Senate held debate concerning 
the associates of Catilina, Caesar, then praetor-designate, spoke in 
firm condemnation of their treason but sought to avert the penalty 
of death. 

It was the excellent consul who carried out the sentence of the 


1 Sallust, BC 53, 5 f.: ‘multis tempestatibus baud sane quisquam Romae virtute 
magnus fuit. sed rnemoria mea ingenti virtute, divorsis moribus fuere viri duo, 
M. Cato et C. Caesar.’ 

2 Biographical detail and scandal, influenced by the subsequent actions of the 
proconsul and Dictator, has produced a conventional, anachronistic and highly 
distorted picture of the earlier career of this Roman nobilis ; cf. the novel but 
convincing arguments of H. Strasburger, Caesars Eintritt in die Geschichte 
( 1 93 ^)* 

3 His mother was an Aurelia, of the house of the Aurelii Cottae. For the 
stemma, showing also a connexion with the Rutilii, Munzer, RA, 327. Caesar also 
had in him the blood of the Marcii Reges (Suetonius, Divus Julius 6 , 1). For the 
stemma of the Julii, P-W x, 183. 

4 Pompeia (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 6 , 2): the son of Q. Pompeius Rufus (rox. 
88 h.c\) had married Sulla’s eldest daughter. 

s His competitors were Q. Lutatius Catulus and P. Servilius Vatia (Plutarch, 
Caesar 7). 



26 TIIE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 

high assembly. But the speech and authority that won the day 
was Cato's. 1 Aged thirty-three and only quaestorian in rank, 
this man prevailed by force of character. Cato extolled the 
virtues that won empire for Rome in ancient days, denounced 
the undeserving rich, and strove to recall the aristocracy to the 
duties of their station. - This was not convention, pretence or 
delusion. Upright and austere, a ferocious defender of his own 
class, a hard drinker and an astute politician, the authentic Cato, 
so far from being a visionary, claimed to be a realist of tradi¬ 
tional Roman temper and tenacity, not inferior to the great 
ancestor whom he emulated almost to a parody, Cato the Censor. 
But it was not character and integrity only that gave Cato the 
primacy before consulars: he controlled a nexus of political 
alliances among the nohiles. 

The Op/wiaies stood sorely in need of a leader. There were 
dangerous rifts in the oligarchy, the wounds of feud and faction. 
Neither Aemilii nor Claudii were quite to be trusted. The elusive 
Crassus, who had supported Catilina as far as his candidature for 
the consulate, was a perpetual menace; and the Metelli, for survival 
or for power, would ally themselves with the strongest military 
leader, with Sulla's heir as before with Sulla. 

The implacable Cato detested the financiers. He stood firm 
against Italians, hating them from his very infancy; 3 and he was 
ready to bribe the plebs of Rome with corn or money. 4 Against 
the military dynast now returning from the East he would oppose 
that alliance of stubborn spirit and political craft which his an¬ 
cestor used to break the power of a monarchic patrician family, the 
Scipiones. Gloria, dignitas and clientelae , the prerogative of the 
aristocracy, s were now being monopolized by one man. Some¬ 
thing more was involved than the privileges of an oligarchy: in 
the contest against Cn. Pompeius Magnus, Cato and his kinsmen 

1 This was notorious. Cicero could not deny it, cf. Ad Alt. 12, 21, 1. 

2 Sallust, BC 52, 21 f.: ‘sed alia fuere, quae illos magnos fecere, quae nobis nulla 
sunt: dorni industria, loris mstum imperium, animus in consulundo liber, neque 
delicto neque lubidini obnoxius. pro his nos habernus luxuriam atque avaritiam, 
publice egestatem, privatim opukntiam. laudamus divitias, sequimur incrtiani.’ 

Plutarch, Cato minor 2 (anecdote of his recalcitrance towards Poppaedius the 
IVlarsian in his uncle's house). Further, his kinsman, L. Porcius Cato (cos. 89), 
was defeated and killed by the Italian insurgents in the Marsic territory (Livy, 
Per. 75). 

4 A great extension of the corn-dole was carried through by Cato in 62 B.c. 
(Plutarch, Cato minor 26). 

5 ‘Sallust’, Ad Caesarem 2, 11, 3: ‘quippe cum illis maiorum virtus partam re- 
liquerit gloriam dignitatem clientelas.’ Cf. Sallust, BJ 85, 4: ‘vetus nobilitas, 
maiorum furtia facta, cognatorum et adfinium opes, multae clientelae.’ 



THE ROMAN OLIGARCHY 27 

saw personal honour and a family feud. The young Pompeius, 
treacherous and merciless, had killed the husband of Servilia and 
the brother of Ahenobarbus. 1 ‘Adulescentulus carnifex.’- 

1 M. Junius Brutus (tr. pi. 83), the (first) husband of Servilia, a Marian and an 
adherent of Lcpidus, capitulating at Mutina to Pompeius, was killed by him 
(Plutarch, Pompeius 16, &c.). Ahenobarbus fell in Africa in 82 H.r.: though some 
versions exculpate Pompeius, there is a contrary tradition. Like the killing of Cn, 
Papirius Carbo (cos. in), a benefactor of Pompeius, these acts were remembered, cf. 
Val. Max. 6, 2, 8; ‘Sallust’, Ad Cacsaran 1,4, 1. 

2 The phrase of Hclvius of Fornnae, Val. Max. 6, 2, 8, 



III. THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 


T HE Pompeii, a family of recent ennoblement, were of non- 
Latin stock, as the name so patently indicates, probably 
deriving their origin from Picenum, a region where they possessed 
large estates and wide influence. 1 Cn. Pompeius Strabo, after 
shattering the Italian insurrection in Picenum, used his influence 
and his army for personal ends and played an ambiguous game 
when civil war broke out between Marius and Sulla. Brutal, cor¬ 
rupt and perfidious, Strabo was believed to have procured the 
assassination of a consul. 2 When he died of a natural but provi¬ 
dential death the populace broke up his funeral. 3 Strabo was a 
sinister character, ‘hated by heaven and by the nobility*, for good 
reasons. 4 There were no words to describe Cn. Pompeius the son. 
After his father’s death, protected by influential politicians, he 
lay low, lurking no doubt in Picenum. 5 6 When Sulla landed at 
Brundisium, the young man, now aged twenty-three, raised on 
his own initiative three legions from the tenants, clients and 
veterans of his father, and led his army to liberate Rome from 
the domination of the Marian faction—for Sulla’s interests and 
for his own. 0 

The career of Pompeius opened in fraud and violence. It was 
prosecuted, in war and in peace, through illegality and treachery. 
He held a command in Africa against Marian remnants and 
triumphed, though not a senator, adding ‘Magnus’ to his name. 
After supporting Lepidus to the consulate and encouraging his 


1 Velleius 2, 20, i, &t\, ef. M. Gclzcr, Die Nobilitcit der r. Republik, 77 f. A num¬ 
ber of men from Picenum, of the tribus Velina , are attested in the consilium of Cn. 
Pompeius Strabo at Asculum, ILS 8888, cf. C. Cichorius, Romischc Studicn (1922), 
130 flf., esp. 158 ff. The root of the name is the Oscan cognate of the Latin ‘quin- 
que’; and the termination ‘-eius’ has been taken as evidence of Etruscan influence 
on the family at some time or other, cf, J. Duchesne, Ant. cl. Ill (1934), 81 ff. 

2 Namely, his own kinsman, Q. Pompeius Rufus, cos. 88 B.C., cf. Appian, BC 1, 

63, 284. 3 Plutarch, Pompeius 1. 

4 Cicero, quoted by Asconius 70 (- p. 79 Clark): ‘hominem dis ac nobilitati 
perinvisum.’ 

5 Plutarch, Pompeius 6. Prosecuted for peculations committed by his father, he 
was saved by Philippus, Hortensius—and by the Marian leader Papirius Carbo 
(Cicero, Brutus 230; Val. Max. 5, 3, 5; 6, 2, 8). 

6 Plutarch, Pompeius 6 f.; Velleius 2, 29, 1; Bell. Afr. 22, 2: ‘gloria et animi 
magnitudine elatus privatus atque adulescentulus paterni exercitus reliquiis collectis 
paene oppressam funditus et deletam Italiam urbemque Romanam in libertatem 
vindicavit.’ 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 29 

subversive designs, he turned upon his ally and saved the govern¬ 
ment. Then, coming back to Rome after six years of absence, 
when he had terminated the war in Spain against Sertorius, 
Pompeius combined with another army commander, Crassus, and 
carried out a peaceful coup d'etat. Elected consuls, Pompeius 
and Crassus abolished the Sullan constitution (70 b.c.). The 
knights received a share in the jury-courts, the tribunes recovered 
the powers of which Sulla had stripped them. They soon repaid 
Pompeius. Through a tribune’s law the People conferred upon 
their champion a vast command against the Pirates, with pro¬ 
consular authority over the coasts of the Mediterranean (the Lex 
Gabinia ). No province of the Empire was immune from his con¬ 
trol. Four years before, Pompeius had not even been a senator. 
The decay of the Republic, the impulsion towards the rule of 
one imperator, were patent and impressive. 1 

To the maritime command succeeded without a break the 
conduct of the Mithridatic War, voted by the Lex Manilla, for 
the financial interests were discontented with Lucullus, the 
Senate’s general. The absent dynast overshadowed the politics 
of Rome, sending home from the East, as before from Spain, his 
lieutenants to stand for magistracies and intrigue in his interest. 
His name dominated elections and legislation. To gain office from 
the votes of the sovran people, no surer password than the favour 
shown or pretended of Pompeius; to reject a bill, no argument 
needed save that the measure was aimed at the People’s general. 2 
Among the ambitious politicians who had publicly spoken for the 
Lex Manilia were Cicero and Caesar, not ceasing to solicit and 
claim the support of Pompeius even though the one of them 
turned against the People when elected consul and the other lent 
his services to Crassus. But alliance with Crassus need not 
alienate Pompeius utterly. Crassus used his patronage to 
demonstrate that he was still a force in politics—and to embarrass 
the government without provoking flagrant disorder. 3 Generous 
in financial subsidy to his allies and tireless in the law-courts, he 
might yet prevail against the popularity and laurels of Pompeius. 

When the great imperator , returning, landed in Italy towards the 
end of the yeaf 62 B.c. with prestige unparalleled and the armies 

1 H. M. Last, CAH ix, 349. This was presumably the conception set forth by 
Sallust in his Histories. 

2 Comm. pet. 5, cf. 51. Compare also Cicero’s whole argument in the speech 
against the land bill of Rullus. 

3 Both actions and motive of Crassus in this period, as of Caesar, have commonly 
been misunderstood. 



3 o THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

and resources of all the East at his back, he disbanded his army. 
Much to his annoyance, the government had proved stronger 
than he expected. A civilian consul, suppressing the revolution 
of Catilina, robbed the indispensable general of the glory of 
saving the Republic in Italy as he had vindicated its empire 
abroad. Pompeius never forgave Cicero. But Cicero was not 
the real enemy. 

It was the habit of Pompeius to boast of the magnitude of his 
clientelei, to advertise monarchs and nations bound to his personal 
allegiance. 1 Like the Macedonian Alexander or the monarchs of 
the line of Seleucus, the Roman conqueror marched along the 
great roads of Asia, dispersing the kings of the East, displaying 
power and founding cities in his name. From Thrace to the 
Caucasus and down to Egypt the eastern lands acknowledged his 
predominance. The worship of power, which ages ago had de¬ 
veloped its own language and conventional forms, paid homage 
to Pompeius as a god, a saviour and a benefactor, devising before 
long a novel title, ‘the warden of earth and sea’. 2 Not so menacing 
to outward show, but no less real and pervasive, was his influence 
in the West— Africa and Mauretania, all Spain, and both provinces 
of Gaul. The power and glory of the master of the world were 
symbolized in three triumphs won from three continents: 

Pompciusque orhis domitor per tresque triumphos 
ante deum princeps. 3 

Pompeius was Princeps beyond dispute -but not at Rome. 
By armed force he might have established sole rule, but by that 
alone and not in solid permanence. The nobilcs were much too 
stubborn to admit a master, even on their own terms. Nor was 
Pompeius in any way to their liking. His family was recent 
enough to excite dispraise or contempt, even among the plebeian 
aristocracy: its first consul (in 141 b.c.) had been promoted 
through patronage of the Scipiones. 4 Subsequent alliances had 
not brought much aristocratic distinction. Pompeius’ mother 
was a Lucilia, niece of that Lucilius from Suessa Aurunca whose 
wealth and talents earned him Scipionic friendship and the 

1 Ad Jam. 9, 9, 2 : ‘return ac nationum clienteles quas os ten tare erebro solebat.' 

1 ILS 9459 (Milctopolis): o | [r]valov lIopLTrrj'Cov Vvalo[v | ui]oi' Mayvov , 

avroKpuLTopa | |r]o rpirov, criorrjpa Kal evep\[y]errjv rod re hlpLov Kai | 1-77? Acrias 
nacrrjs, € 7 ro\\n]rrjv yrj<: re Kal 8 aXdcr\\or]r)s t dpcrrjs eveKa Kal | \ev\voias 
eavrov. 

* Manilius, Astron. i, 793 f. 

4 Miinzer, RA f 248 f. Described as ‘humiJ.i atque obscuro loco natus* {In 
Vcrrcm n, 5, 181 j—that is, simply a novus homo. 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 31 

licence to write political satire with impunity. 1 Pompeius was also 
related to other families of the local gentry, the men of substance 
in the municipia of Italy; 2 and h£ contracted tics of friendship 
with a number of great landowners of the class and rank of 
M. Terentius Varro from Reate, m the Sabine land. 3 

The bulk of Pompeius* personal adherents in the senatorial 
and equestrian orders derived, as was fitting, from Picenum— 
men of no great social distinction, the hungry sons of a poor and 
populous region. Devoted attachment in war and politics to 
the baronial family of Picenum was the one sure hope of advance¬ 
ment. M. Lollius Palieanus, a popular and ambitious orator of 
humble extraction, managed the negotiations between tribunes 
and army commanders when they united to overthrow the con¬ 
stitution of Sulla. 4 The soldier L. Afranius commanded armies 
for Pompeius in Spain and in the war against Mithridates. 5 
Among other Pieene partisans may be reckoned T. Labienus, 
and perhaps A. Gabinius. () 

For primacy in Rome Pompeius needed support from the 
mobiles. The dynastic marriage pointed the way. Sulla, as was 
expedient, had married a Metella: the aspirant to Sulla’s power, 

1 Velleius 2, 29, 2. On Pompeius’ kinship with C\ Lucilius Hirrus ( tr. pi. 53), cf. 
C. Cichorius, R. Studien, 67 if.; A. B. West, AJP xux (1928), 240 ff., with a stemma 
on p. 252. Hirrus was a great landowner. Varro (RR 2,1,2) refers to his ‘nobiles 
pecuariae’ in Bruttium—inherited, as Cichorius suggests, from the poet. On his 
fish-ponds, Varro, RR 3, 17, 3; Pliny, Nil 9, 171. 

For example, M. Atius Balbus from Aricia, who married Caesar's sister Julia 
(Suetonius, Divus Aug. 4, 1); and Hirrus was married to a daughter of L. Cossinius 
(Varro, RR 2, 1,2), the leading authority on goats (ib. 2,3, 1), who had been a legate 
of Pompeius in the war against the Pirates (ib. 2, praef. >). Another member of 
this group was Cn. Trernellius Scrofa, suitably eloquent about pigs (ib. 2, 4, 1 ff.) 
and a master of all rural science (ib. j, 2, 10). 

3 Varro served as a legate with Pompeius both in the Sertorian W^ar and in the 
East, on sea and on land, cf. C. Cichorius, R. Studien, 189 ff. 

4 Pseudo-Asconius on Cicero, Div. in Caec ., p. 1189 St. Sallust (Hist. 4,43 m) de¬ 
scribes him as ‘hurnili loco Picens.loquax magisquam facundus’. He hoped to stand 
for the consulate in 67 (Val. Max. 3, 8, 3) and again in 65 (Ad Att. 1, 1, 1). Note 
also Pompeius’ legate L. Lollius (Appian, Mithr. 95; Josephus, AJ 14, 29). 

s Against Sertorius: Plutarch, Sertorius 19; Orosius 5, 23, 14. Against Mithri¬ 
dates: Plutarch, Pompeius 34, &c. For his origin note the dedication nr. Cupra 
Maritima ( ILS 878). 

0 Labienus certainly came from Picenum (Cicero, Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo 
22), presumably from Cingulum (Caesar, BC 1, 15, 2; Silius Italicus, Punica 10, 
34). The assumption that Labienus was a Pompeian partisan from the beginning 
is attractive, cf. JRS xxvm (1938), 113 ff. About Gabinius' origin, nothing is 
known. But his wife Lollia (Suetonius, Divus Julius 50, 1) may well be a daughter 
of Palieanus, whose candidature he supported in 67 (Val. Max. 3, 8, 3). The 
Pompeian military man M. Petreius, old in service (Sallust, BC 59, 6), was 
probably the son of a centurion from the Volscian country (cf. Pliny, NH 22, 11). 



32 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

abruptly divorcing his own wife, took Metella's daughter, Aemilia. 1 
When Aemilia died, Pompeius kept up that connexion by marrying 
another woman of that house. 2 The alliance with the Metelli, by 
no means unequivocal or unclouded, endured for some fifteen years 
after Sulla's death. 

Provinces and armies gave resources of patronage and mutual 
obligation for political ends. Men went out to serve under 
Pompeius as quaestors or legates and returned to Rome to hold 
higher office, tribunate, praetorship, or even consulate. The 
lieutenants of Pompeius in the eastern wars comprised not only 
personal adherents like Afranius and Gabinius but nobiles in the 
alliance of the general, seeking profit and advancement in their 
careers, such as the two Metelli (Celer and Nepos) and certain 
of the Cornelii Lentuli. 3 

In the year of Cicero's consulate Q. Metellus Celer was 
praetor. 4 The activities of the tribune Labienus and his associates 
on Pompeius’ behalf were more open and more offensive: a decree 
of the People was enacted, permitting the conqueror of the East to 
wear the robe of a triumphator or a golden crown at certain public 
ceremonies. 5 In December Metellus Nepos, sent home by Pom¬ 
peius , inaugurated his tribunate with alarming proposals: Pompeius 
should be elected consul in absence or recalled to Italy to establish 
public order. 0 Nepos also silenced the consul Cicero and forbade 
by veto a great speech from the saviour of the Republic. 7 

Abetted by the praetor Caesar, Nepos went on with his pro¬ 
posals in the next year, causing bitter opposition from leaders of 
the government. The Senate proclaimed a state of emergency, 
suspended the tribune from his functions, and even threatened to 
depose him. 8 Nepos fled to Pompeius, a pretext for intervention 
to vindicate the sacred rights of the Roman People. Men feared 
a civil war. When Pompeius asked that the consular elections 
be postponed to permit the candidature of his legate, M. Pupius 
Piso, the request was granted. 0 

• 1 Plutarch, Pompeius 9, cf. J. Carcopino, Sylla , 127 f. 

2 Mucia, daughter of Q. Mucius Scaevola (cos. 95) and uterine sister of Celer 
and Nepos (AdJam. 5, 2, 6). 

3 For the full lists of Pompeius’ legates in the two wars, cf. Drumann-Groebe, 
Gesch. Roms iv 2 , 420 ff.; 486. 

4 The manner in which he terminated the trial of Rabirius surely indicates 
collusion with the prosecutor, Labienus (Dio 37, 2 J, 3). 

5 Velleius 2, 40. 40; Dio 37, 21, 4. 

6 Plutarch, Cicero 23; Cato minor 26; Dio 37, 43, 1. 

7 Plutarch, Cicero 23; Dio 37, 38, 2. 

8 Plutarch, Cato ?ninor 29; Dio 37, 43, 3. 


9 Dio 37, 44, 3. 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 33 

Pompeius on his return, lacking valid excuse for armed usur¬ 
pation, tried to reinforce his predominance by the peaceful means of 
a new dynastic alliance. He saw the way at once. Having divorced 
his wife, the half-sister of Celer and Nepos, a woman of flagrant in¬ 
fidelity, he asked for Cato’s niece in marriage. 1 Cato rebuffed him. 

Baffling enough after an absence of five years, Roman politics 
were further complicated by the affair of P. Clodius Pulcher,amild 
scandal touching the religion of the State which his enemies 
exploited and converted into a political contest. 2 Pompeius 
Magnus trod warily and pleased nobody. His first speech before 
the People was flat and verbose, saying nothing. 5 No happier 
in the Senate, the conqueror of the East neglected to praise the 
saviour of Italy, and thereby put a double-edged weapon in the 
hand of Crassus, who disliked them both. 4 Nor was Pompeius’ 
consul effective, though a witty man and an orator as well as a 
soldier. 5 Pompeius set all his hopes on the next year. By scanda¬ 
lous bribery he secured the election of the military man L. 
Afranius. The other place was won by Metellus Celer, who, 
to get support from Pompeius, stifled for the moment an insult 
to the honour of his family. 6 

Everything went wrong. The consul Celer turned against 
Pompeius, and Afranius was a catastrophe, his only talent for 
civil life being the art of dancing. 7 The Optimates were exultant. 
Catulus and Hortensius had led the opposition to the laws of 
Manilius and Gabinius. Catulus was now dead, Hortensius en¬ 
folded in luxurious torpor. But Lucullus emerged, alert and 
vindictive, to contest the dispositions made by Pompeius in the 
East. Pompeius requested their acceptance by the Senate, all 
in one measure: Lucullus insisted on debate, point by point. 
Heprevailed, supported by Crassus, by Cato and by the Metelli. 8 

Then a second defeat. The tribune L. Flavius brought forward 

1 Plutarch, Pompeius 44; Cato minor 30. Cf. Mtinzer, RA, 349 fF. 

2 That it need not have been a serious matter is shown by Ad Att. 1, 13, 3: 
‘nosmet ipsi, qui Lycurgei a principio fuissemus, cotidie demitigamur.’ 

3 Ad Att. 1, 14, 1: ‘non iucunda miseris, inanis improbis, beatis non grata, bonis 
non gravis; itaque frigebat/ 

4 lb. i, 14, 3. 

5 lb. 1, 13, 2: ‘facie magis quam facetiis ridiculus’; Pro Plancio 12: ‘homini 
nobilissimo, innocentissimo, eloquentissimo, M. Pisoni.’ 

6 Dio 37, 49, 1. 

7 His consulate a disgrace, Ad Att . 1, 18, 5; 19, 4; 20, 5. His talent as a dancer, 
Dio 37, 49, 3. 

8 Dio 37, 49, 4 fF. (Metellus Creticus (cos. 69) bore a grudge against Pompeius 
as the result of an earlier clash, in 67 B.c. Velleius 2, 40, 6). There was rioting, and 
Pompeius’ tribune Flavius imprisoned the consul Metellus Celer (Ad Att. 2, 1, 8). 




34 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

an ambitious bill providing lands for the veterans of Pompeius. 
Celer opposed it. More significant evidence of Pompeius’ weak¬ 
ness was the conduct of Cicero. He leapt boldly into the fray, 
I and slashed the bill to pieces. Yet he claimed at the same time 
I that he was doing a good service to Pompeius. 1 Cicero was in 
^high spirits and fatal confidence. At variance with the Metelli 
through his clash with Nepos, he had broken with the Claudii and 
carelessly incurred a bitter feud by giving testimony, under 
secret and domestic pressure, against P. Clodius; 2 and he had 
prevented the Pompeian consul Pupius Piso from getting the 
province of Syria. 3 

But the great triumph was Cato’s, and the greater delusion. 
The leader of the Optimates had fought against the consuls and 
tribunes of Pompeius Magnus, mocked the flaunting victories 
over effeminate orientals, and scorned alliance with the conqueror 
of the world. The triumphal robe of Magnus seemed chill comfort 
in political defeat. 4 

Cato went too far. When the knights who farmed the taxes 
of Asia requested a rebate from the Senate, Cato denounced 
their rapacity and repelled their demand. 5 Crassus was behind 
the financiers and Crassus waited, patient in rancour. To main¬ 
tain power, the government needed consuls. The men were not 
easy to find. Cato gathered a great fund to carry by bribery the 
election of Bibulus, his daughter’s husband. 6 He should have 
made certain of both consuls. 

Caesar, returning from his command in Spain, asked for a 
triumph. Cato blocked the triumph. To wait for it would be 
to sacrifice the consulate. Caesar made a rapid decision—he 
would be consul, and to some purpose. The Roman noble, 
constrained in the pursuit of ambition to adopt the language 
and tactics of a demagogue, might be captured by the govern¬ 
ment at a certain stage in his career, with no discredit to either. 
Caesar’s choice was still open had it not been for Cato; and Cae¬ 
sar’s daughter was betrothed to Servilia’s son, Cato’s nephew . 7 But 

1 Ad Att. i, 19, 4. 2 Plutarch, Cicero 29. 

3 Ad Att. 1, 16, 8. 

4 lb. 1, 18, 6: ‘Pompeius togulam illam pictam silentio tuetur suam.’ 

5 lb. 2, 1, 8. 0 Suetonius, Divus Iulius iq, 1. 

7 Julia was betrothed to a certain Servilius Caepio (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 21 ; 
Plutarch, Caesar 14; Pompeius 47). Miinzer (DA, 338!'.) argues that this is no 
other than Brutus, adopted by his maternal uncle Q. Servilius Caepio (who died in 
67 b.c.) and bearing, as his official name, ‘Q. Caepio Biurns’ (Cicero, Phil. 10, 25, 
&c.). For a discussion of other views, cf. Munzer in P-W 11 a, 1775 tf. 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 35 

Cato had private grounds as well as public for hating Caesar, the 
lover of Servilia. 1 

There was nothing to preclude an alliance with Pompeius. 
Praetor-designate and praetor, Caesar worked with Pompeius* 
tribunes, devising honours for the absent general and trouble 
for the government. 2 He had also prosecuted an ex-consul 
hostile to Pompeius. 3 But Caesar was no mere adherent of 
Pompeius: by holding aloof he enhanced his price. Now, in 
the summer of the year, Caesar stood for the consulate backed by 
Crassus' wealth, and in concert with L. Lucceius, an opulent 
friend of Pompeius. 4 

Caesar was elected. Pompeius, threatened in his dignitas , with 
his acta needing ratification and loyal veterans clamorous for 
recompense, was constrained to a secret compact. 'The diplo¬ 
matic arts of Caesar reconciled Crassus with Pompeius, to satisfy 
the ambitions of all three, and turned the year named after the 
consuls Metellus and Afranius into a date heavy with history. 5 

In the next year the domination of Pompeius Magnus was 
openly revealed. It rested upon his own auctoritas , the wealth 
and influence of Crassus, the consular power of Caesar, and the 
services of a number of tribunes; further, less obtrusive and 
barely to be perceived through the tumultuous clamour of political 
life at Rome under Caesar's consulate, several partisans or allies 
already in control of the more important provincial armies. 6 The 
combination ruled, though modified in various ways, and impaired 
as time went on, for some ten years. 7 This capture of the 

1 The liaison was notorious (Plutarch, Brutus 5, &c.) and gave rise to the vulgar 
and untenable opinion that Brutus was Caesar's son. 

2 In alliance, namely, with both Labienus and Q. Metellus Nepos. 

3 C. Calpurnius Piso (r'>r. 67), cf. Sallust, BC 49, 2. On his reiterated opposition 
to Pompeius, cf. Dio 36, 24, 3; 37, 2; Asconius 51 ( — p. 58 Clark), &c. 

4 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 19, 1. On his influence with Pompeius (at a later date), 
comparable to that of the Greek Thcophancs, cf. Ad Att. 9, 1,3; 11,3; Caesar, BC 
3, 18, 3 : ‘adhibito Libone et L. Lucceio et Theophane, quibuscum communicare de 
maximis rebus Pompeius consueverat.’ 

5 Florus 2, 13, it: ‘sic igitur Caesare dignitatem comparare, Crasso augere, 
Pompcio retinere cupientibus omnibusque pariter potentiae cupidis de invadenda 
re publica facile convenit.’ 

6 Afranius was perhaps proconsul of Gallia Cisalpina in 59 b.c. (Ad Att. 1, 19, 
2; I11 Pisonem 58, cf. M. Gelzer, Hermes liii (1928), 11S; 135). C. Octavius, the 
husband of Caesar’s niece, Atia, governed Macedonia in 60 59 b.c. (Suetonius, 
Divus Aug . 3 f.). In Syria L. Marcius Philippus was succeeded by Cn. Cornelius 
Lentulus Marcclhnus in 60 or 59 (Appian, Syr. 51); and in 59 P. Cornelius Lentu- 
lus Spinther became proconsul of Hispania Citerior, with help from Caesar (BC 1, 
22, 4). On Pompeius’ relations with the Lentuli, below, p. 44. 

7 Florus 2, 13, 13: ‘decern annos traxit ista dominatio ex fide, quia mutuo metu 
tenebantur.’ 



36 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

constitution may fairly be designated as the end of the Free State. 
From a triumvirate it was a short step to dictatorship. 

Caesar's consulate was only the beginning. To maintain the 
legislation of that year, and perpetuate the system, Pompeius 
needed armies in the provinces and instruments at Rome. Cer¬ 
tain armies were already secured. But Pompeius required for 
his ally more than an ordinary proconsulate. To this end Caesar 
was granted the province of Cisalpine Gaul, which dominated 
Italy, for five years. Pompeius’ purpose was flagrant—there 
could be no pretext of public emergency, as for the eastern 
commands. 1 Transalpine Gaul was soon added. Further, the 
three rulers designated consuls for the next year, L. Calpurnius 
Piso, a cultivated aristocrat with no marked political activities, 
and A. Gabinius, a Pompeian partisan superior in ability to 
Afranius. Pompeius had sealed the pact by taking in marriage 
Caesar’s daughter, Julia; and Caesar now married a daughter of 
Piso. Gabinius and Piso in their turn received important military 
provinces, Syria and Macedonia, through special laws. Gabinius 
and Piso were the most conspicuous, but not the only adherents 
of the dynasts, whose influence decided the consular elections for 
the next two years as well. 2 

Despite patronage at home and armed power in the provinces, the 
ascendancy of Pompeius was highly unstable. As a demonstration 
and a warning, Cicero was sacrificed to Clodius. Not content 
thus to satisfy both personal honour and the convenience of the 
dynasts, the tribune proceeded to reinforce his own influence, his 
prospect of praetorship and consulate. To that end he promul¬ 
gated popular laws and harried Pompeius, in which activities he 
got encouragement from his brother Appius, from his kinsmen the 
( Metelli, and from Crassus, a combination in no way anomalous. 3 

1 Ad Att. 2, 16, 2: ‘quid? hoc quern ad modum obtinebis? oppressos vos, in- 
quit, tenebo excrcitu Caesaris.’ Compare Appian, BC 3, 27, 103 (with reference to 
Antonius in 44 B.C.) : 7) be f 3 ovArj T 7 ]vbe rrjv KeAriKrju aKporroXiv cni cr</>lcnv rjyovpLevr) 
ebvaxepaive. 

2 Attested for Lentulus Spinthcr, one of the consuls of 57 (Caesar, BC 1, 22, 4), 
and plausibly to be inferred for his colleague Nepos: Nepos got the province of 
Hispania Citerior after his consulate (Plutarch, Caesar 21; Dio 39, 54, 1). Their 
successors, L. Marcius Philippus and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, 
were not strong political men. But Philippus had recently married Caesar’s 
niece Atia, widow of C. Octavius (his daughter Marcia, however, was the wife 
of Cato); and Marcellinus had been a legate of Pompeius (Appian, Mithr. 95; 
SIG* 750). 

3 Crassus was in alliance with the Metelli not only through his elder son ( ILS 
881). The younger, P. Crassus, was married by now to Cornelia, daughter of that 
P. Scipio who, adopted by Metellus Pius, became Q. Metellus Scipio. P. Scipio’s 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 37 

Pompeius in reply worked for the restitution of Cicero, and^ 
at length achieved it. For himself, after a famine in Rome, 
perhaps deliberately enhanced, he secured a special commission 
for five years to purchase and control corn for the city. The 
powers were wide, but perhaps fell short of his designs. 1 Then^ 
arose a question of foreign policy, the restoration of .Pt olemy 
Auletes the King of Egy pt, which provoked long debate ana 
intrigue, further sharpening the enmity between Pompeius and 
Crassus. 

In the spring of 56 b.c. the dynasts’ coalition seemed likely, 
to collapse. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus came forth with his can¬ 
didature and loud threats that he would deprive Caesar of army 
and provinces. Some might hope to persuade Pompeius, making 
him sacrifice Caesar in return for alliance with the oligarchy. 
Cicero took heart. He proclaimed the ideal of a conservative 
union of all classes bound in loyalty to the Senate and guided 
by modest and patriotic principes . 1 Which was harmless enough, 
had he not been emboldened to announce in the Senate an 
attack upon the legislation of Caesar’s consulate. Pompeius 
dissembled and departed from Rome. 3 Crassus meanwhile had 
gone to Ravenna to confer with Caesar. The three met at Luca 
and renewed the compact, with a second consulate for Pompeius 
and Crassus and, after that, Spain and Syria respectively for 
five years; Caesar’s command was also to be prolonged. 

Pompeius emerged with renewed strength from a crisis which 
he may have done much to provoke. 4 Had he dropped Caesar, 
he might have been entrapped by the Optimates and circumvented 
by Crassus, their potential ally. Now he would have an army 
of his own in Spain to support his predominance at Rome. 

The enemies of the dynasts paid for their confidence or their 
illusions. Ahenobarbus w r as robbed of his consulate, and Cicero 
was compelled to give private guarantees of good behaviour, 
public demonstrations of loyal acquiescence. 5 The three principes 
now dominated the State, holding in their hands the most power¬ 
ful of the provinces and some twenty legions. 

mother was the daughter of L. Licinius Crassus (cos. 95 B.c.), cf. P-W xm, 479 f. 
Pius died c. 64 b.c. 

1 Note the extravagant proposal of the tribune C. Messius, Ad Att. 4, 1,7. 

2 Pro Sestio 136 flf. 

3 Cf. especially Ad fam. 1, 9, 8 f. Pompeius had probably lent perfidious en¬ 

couragement to Cicero. Cicero, of course, complains of having been let down by 
the Optimates (ib., passim). 4 Cf. M, Cary, CQ xvn (1923), 103 ff. 

5 The speeches Pro Balbo and De prov. cons.: the latter is probably not the 
7raAtva>8ta to which he refers in Ad Att. 4, 5, 1. 



38 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

The basis of power at Rome stands out clearly—the consulate, 
the armies and the tribunate: in the background, the all-per¬ 
vading auctoritas of a senior statesman. Augustus, the last of 
the dynasts, took direct charge of the greater military provinces 
and exercised indirect control over the rest; and he arrogated 
to himself the power of the whole board of tribunes. Proconsulate 
impcrium and tribunicia potestas were the two pillars of the 
edifice. 

The principes strove for prestige and power, but not to erect 
a despotic rule upon the ruins of the constitution, or to carry 
out a real revolution. The constitution served the purposes 
of generals or of demagogues well enough. When Pompeius 
returned from the East, he lacked the desire as well as the pretext 
to march on Rome; and Caesar did not conquer Gaul in the 
design of invading Italy with a great army to establish a military 
autocracy. Their ambitions and their rivalries might have been 
tolerated in a small city-state or in a Rome that was merely 
the head of an Italian confederation. In the capital of the world 
they were anachronistic and ruinous. To the bloodless but violent 
usurpations of 70 and 59 b.c. the logical end was armed conflict 
^and despotism. As the soldiers were the proletariat of Italy, the 
revolution became social as well as political. 

The remedy was simple and drastic. For the health of the 
Roman People the dynasts had to go. Augustus completed the 
purge and created the New State. 

The swift rise of Caesar menaced the primacy of Pompeius 
the Great. No longer an agent and minister but a rival, the 
conqueror of Gaul filched his laurels, his prestige and his 
partisans. With the death of Julia, and the disappearance of 
Crassus, slain by the Parthians (53 b.c.), the danger of a breach 
between Pompeius and his ally might appear imminent. It was not 
so in reality. Pompeius had not been idle. Though proconsul of 
all Spain, he resided in the suburban vicinity of Rome, con¬ 
templating the decline of Republican government and hastening 
its end. Ahenobarbus had become consul at last, with Ap. 
Claudius Pulchcr for colleague (54 b.c.). Neither was strong 
enough to harm Pompeius; and Ap. Puleher may already have 
been angling for an alliance. 1 The consuls achieved their own 
| disgrace by bargaining to procure the election of their successors 
for money. 2 Pompeius caused the scandal to be shown up. 
| Then his cousin C. Lucilius Hirrus announced a proposal that 

1 Below, p. 45. 2 Ad Att. 4, 15, 7, &c. 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 39 

he be made dictator. 1 Pompeius, openly disavowing, kept Kis 
own counsel and deceived nobody. 

Corruption reigned, and disorder, with suspension of public 
business. The next year opened without consuls. Similar but 
worse was the beginning of 52 B.c., three candidates contending 
in violence and rioting, chief among whom was the favourite of 
the Optimates , T. Annius Milo, a brutal and vicious person who 
had married Fausta, the dissolute daughter of Sulla. 2 His enemy 
P. Clodius was running for the praetorship. When Milo killed 
Clodius, the populace of Rome, in grief for their patron and 
champion, displayed his body in the Forum, burned it on a pyre 
in the Curia, and destroyed that building in the conflagration. 
Then they streamed out of the city to the villa of Pompeius, 
clamouring for him to be consul or dictator. 3 

The Senate was compelled to act. It declared a state of emer¬ 
gency and instructed Pompeius to hold military levies throughout 
Italy. 4 The demands for a dictatorship went on: to counter and 
anticipate which, the Optimates were compelled to offer Pompeius 
the consulate, without colleague. The proposal came from 
Bibulus, the decision was Cato’s. 3 

The pretext was a special mandate to heal and repair the 
Commonwealths With armed men at his back Pompeius estab¬ 
lished order again and secured the conviction of notorious 
disturbers of the public peace, especially Milo, to the dismay 
and grief of the Optimates , who strove in vain to save him. 7 
Measures were passed to check flagrant abuses. One law, pre¬ 
scribing that provinces be granted, not at once and automatically 
after praetorship and consulate, but when an interval of five 
years had elapsed, was recommended by the fair show of mitigating 
electoral corruption, but in fact provided resources of patronage 
for the party in control of the government. Nor was it at all 
likely that the dynast would abide by letter or spirit of his own 
legislation. 

1 The proposal was not published until 53, when Hirrus was tribune. Cato 
nearly deprived him of his office (Plutarch, Pompeius 54). But there were strong 
and authentic rumours the year before, cf. Ad Q. frutrem 3, 8, 4. 

2 Milo was a Papius by birth, adopted by his maternal grandfather T. Annius 

of Lanuvium (Asconius 47 = p. 53 Clark). 3 Asconius 29 — p. 33 Clark. 

4 Asconius 29 — p. 34 Clark; Caesar, BG 7, 1, 1. 

5 Asconius 31 - p. 35 f. Clark; Plutarch, Cato minor 47, &c. 

6 Appian, BC 2, 28, 107: cV depaTreiav rrjs ttoXcqjs emKXrjdefa ; cf. Plutarch, 
Pompeius 55; Tacitus, Ann. 3, 28. 

7 Asconius 30 = p. 34 Clark: ‘adfuerunt Miloni Q. Hortcnsius, M. Cicero, M. 
Marcellus, M. Calidius, M. Cato,. Faustus Sulla.’ 



4 o THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

Pompeius looked about for new alliances, in the hope perhaps 
to inherit some measure of Crassus’ influence with the aristo¬ 
cracy. Of the candidates for the consulate, Milo had been 
condemned and exiled, likewise P. Plautius Hypsaeus, once his 
own adherent but now coolly sacrificed. The third was more 
useful—Q. Metellus Scipio, vaunting an unmatched pedigree, yet 
ignorant as well as unworthy of his ancestors, corrupt and 
debauched in the way of his life. 1 Pompeius took in marriage 
his daughter, Cornelia, the widow of P. Crassus, rescued him 
from a due and deserved prosecution, and chose him as colleague 
for the remaining five months of the year. 

A new combination was ready to form, with the ultimate decision 
to turn on the dynast’s attitude towards Caesar and towards 
Cato. Pompeius prolonged his own possession of Spain for five 
years more and sought by a trick to annul the law passed by the 
tribunes of the year conceding to Caesar the right to stand for 
the consulate in absence. Detected, he made tardy and ques¬ 
tionable amends. The dynast was not yet ready to drop his ally. 
He needed Caesar for counterbalance against the Catonian party 
until he made final choice between the two. Cato, standing 
for the consulate, was signally defeated, to the satisfaction of 
Pompeius no less than of Caesar. 

Two years passed, heavy with a gathering storm. Caesar’s 
enemies were precipitate and impatient. Early in 51 the consul 
M. Marcellus opened the attack. He was rebuffed by Pompeius, 
and the great debate on Caesar’s command was postponed till 
March 1st of the following year. Pompeius remained ambiguous, 
with hints of going to Spain, but forced by the Optimates , not 
altogether against his will, to demand a legion from Caesar. 
The pretext was the insecurity of Syria, gravely menaced by the 
Parthians. 2 Caesar complied. Pompeius proclaimed submission 
to the Senate as a solemn duty. 3 The legion was not withdrawn, 
however, until the next year, along with another previously lent by 
Pompeius to Caesar. Both were retained in Italy. 

Though Pompeius or the enemies of Caesar might prevail at 
the consular elections, that was no unmixed advantage. The 
Marcelli were rash but unstable, other consuls timid or 

1 On his ancestry, cf. Cicero, Brutus 212 f.; his ignorance about a detail of family 
history, Ad Att. 6, i, 17. His morals (Val. Max. 9, 1,8) and his capacity (Caesar, 
BC 1, 4, 3; 3, 31. 1) were pretty dubious. 

2 Ad Jam. 8, 4, 4. Marcellus’ flogging of a man of Comum had been premature 
and by no means to the liking of Pompeius (Ad Att. 5, 11, 2). 

3 Ad Jam. 8, 4, 4: ‘omnis oportere senatui dicto audientis esse.’ 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 41 

venal. 1 Caesar could always count on tribunes. C. Scribonius 
Curio, a vigorous orator, began the year as a champion of the 
government, but soon showed his colours, blocking the long- 
awaited discussion on Caesar’s provinces and confounding the 
oligarchy by pertinacious proposals that both dynasts should 
surrender their armies and save the Commonwealth. 

Curio became a popular hero, and the People was incited 
against the Senate. The threat of a coalition between Pompeius 
and the Optimates united their enemies and reinforced the party 
of Caesar. Caesar had risen to great power through Pompeius, 
helped by the lieutenants of Pompeius in peace and in war, and 
now Caesar had become a rival political leader in his own right. 
In eveiy class of society the defeated and dispossessed, eager 
for revenge, looked to Caesar’s consulate, or Caesar’s victory 
and the rewards of greed and ambition in a war against the Sullan 
oligarchy. Italy began to stir. 

In the city of Rome political contests and personal feuds 
now grew sharper. Ap. Claudius Pulcher, elected to the censor¬ 
ship, an office which was a patent rebuke to his own private 
conduct, worked for his party by ejection of undesirable senators, 
and augmented the following of Caesar. The arrogant and stub¬ 
born censor, mindful, like Cato, of a great ancestor, turned his 
attack on the tribune Curio, but in vain, and on Curio’s friend, the 
aedile M. Caelius Rufus, provoking a reciprocal charge of un¬ 
natural vice. 2 Caelius’ enemies drove him to Caesar’s side. 

Ap. Pulcher was no adornment to the party of Cato. Already 
another leader, the consular Ahenobarbus, had suffered defeat 
in contest for an augurship against M. Antonius, sent from Gaul 
by Caesar. 3 That event showed clearly the strength of the 
opposing parties in command of votes at Rome. Moreover, 
Antonius and other adherents of Caesar, elected tribunes for the 
next year, promised to continue the tactics of Curio. 

In the autumn men began to speak of an inevitable war. 
Fortune was arranging the scene for a grand and terrible spectacle . 4 

1 Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51) was very mild and loath to provoke a civil war (Dio 
4°. 59> 1 ; Adfarn. 4, 3, 1, &c.); L. Aemilius Paullus (cos. 50) was bought (Suetonius, 
Divus Iiilius 29, 1, See.) ; and Caesar had conceived very rational hopes of purchasing 
L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus, cos. dcs. for 49, a man loaded with debts, avid and 
openly venal (Ad Att. 11,6, 6; Caesar, BC 1,4,2). 

2 For the full details, cf. P-W 11 a, 870 ff.; in, 1269 f. 

3 Ad Jam. 8, 14, 1. 

4 As Caelius observed, ‘si sine summo periculo fieri posset, magnum et iucundum 
tibi Fortuna spcctaculum parabat’ (AdJam. 8, 14, 4). For a clear and dispassionate 
statement of the issue, ib. § 2. 



42 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

Caesar would tolerate no superior, Pompeius no rival. 1 Caesar had 
many enemies, provoked by his ruthless ambition, by his acts of 
arrogance towards other principes- —-and by his support, when con¬ 
sul and proconsul, of the domination of Pompeius, who now, for 
supreme power, seemed likely to throw over his ally. 

On December ist Curio’s proposal came up in the Senate 
again, revealing an overpowering majority against both dynasts. 2 
The consul C. Marcellus denounced the apathy of senators as 
submission to tyranny, protested that Caesar was already in¬ 
vading Italy, and took action on behalf of the Commonwealth. 
Accompanied by the consuls-eleet he went to Pompeius and 
handed him a sword, with dramatic gesture, bidding him take 
command of the armed forces in Italy. 

Pompeius already held all Spain, in an anomalous and arbi¬ 
trary fashion. As a consequence of the law of ^2 B.c. the other 
provinces from Macedonia eastwards were in the hands of men 
loyal to the government, or at least not dangerous; 3 and all the 
kings, princes and tetrarchs, remembering their patron, wei*e 
ready to bring their levies at his command. Magnus, it might 
seem, was strong enough to prevent civil war, free to negotiate 
without being accused of ignoble timidity. 4 But the dynast 
remained ambiguous and menacing. To his allies he expressed 
firm confidence, pointed to his armed forces and spoke con¬ 
temptuously of the proconsul of Caul. 5 6 Rumour spontaneous or 
fabricated told of discontent among Caesar’s soldiers and officers; 
and there was solid ground to doubt the loyalty of Caesar’s best 
marshal, T. Labienus. () 

Then followed debate in the Senate, public attempts at medi¬ 
ation and negotiation in private. On January ist a proposal of 
Caesar was rejected and he was declared contumacious: six days 
later his province was taken from him. The Caesarian tribunes 

1 For this precise formulation, Lucan, Pharsalia i, 125 f.; Florus 2, 13, 14. For 
Pompeius’ jealousy, Caesar, BC t, 4, 4; Velleius 2, 29, 2; 33, 3. For Caesar’s 
ambition, Plutarch, Antonins 6 (cl. Suetonius, Divus litlius 30, 5): t'pajs dirapr]- 
yoprjros <xpx?is kcll 7 rtpip.avi)<t emdvfiLa rod rrpedrov elvai /cat (.ityiorov (from Pollio ?). 

2 For the order of events in December 50 and January 49 b.c., cf. E. Meyer, 
Caesars Monarchic und das Principat des Pom pejus* (1922), 271 ff. 

3 As Caesar complains, BC 1, 85, 9: ‘per paucos probati et electi’. 

4 Caesar, ib. 1, 32, 8 f.: ‘neque se reformidare quod in senatu Pompeius paulo 
ante dixisset, ad quos legati mitterentur, his auctoritatem attribui timoremque 
corum qui mitterent signiiicari. tenuis atque inlirmi haec animi videri.’ 

5 Ad Att. 7, 8, 4: ‘vehementer homincm contemnobat et suis ct rei publicae 
copiis confidebat.’ 

6 The expectation that Labienus would desert Caesar was probably an important 
factor. 



TIIE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 43 

M. Antonius and Q. Cassius, their veto disregarded, fled from the 
city. A state of emergency was proclaimed. 

Even had Pompeius now wished to avert the appeal to arms, he 
was swept forward by uncontrollable forces, entangled in the 
embrace of perfidious allies: or, as he called it himself, patriotic 
submission to the needs of the Commonwealth. 1 The coalition may 
summarily be described as four ancient and eminent families, 
linked closely with one another and with the Catonian faction. 

Rising to power with support from the Metelli, though not 
without quarrels and rivalry, Pompeius broke the alliance when 
he returned from the East; and the consul Metellus Celer banded 
with the Catonian faction to attack and harry Pompeius. But the 
feud was not bitter or beyond remedy: the Metelli were too politic 
for that. Three years later Nepos was consul, perhaps with help 
from Pompeius. Signs of an accommodation became perceptible. 
Despite five consulates in twenty-three years, the Metelli soon 
found that their power was passing. Death took off their consuls 
one by one. 2 Marriage or adoption might retrieve the waning 
fortunes of a noble family. The Metelli had employed their 
women to good effect in the past; and one of their daughters was 
given in marriage to the elder son of the dynast Crassus. Further, 
a Scipio, almost the last of his line, himself the grandson of a 
Mctella, had passed by adoption into their family. This was 
Q. Metellus Scipio, father-in-law and colleague of Pompeius in 
his third consulate. 

The compact with Metelli and Scipiones recalled ancient 
history and revealed the political decline of two great houses. The 
Pompeii had once been hangers-on of the Scipiones. But the 
power and splendour of that imperial house, the conquerors of 
Carthage and of Spain, belonged only to the past* They had been 
able to show only one consul in the preceding generation. 3 
More spectacular the eclipse of the plebeian Claudii Marcelli, who 
emulated the Scipiones in their great age: obscure for a century, 
they emerge again into sudden prominence with three consuls 
in the last three years of the Free State. 4 The influence of 

1 Caesar, BC 1, 8, 3 : ‘semper se rci publicae cornmoda privatis nccessitudinibus 
habuisse potiora.’ 

1 Namely Metellus Pius (cos. 80), who died in 64, Crcticus (69) r. 54, L. Metellus 
(68) in his consulate, Celer (60) the year after his, Nepos (57) c. 54. 

3 L. Cornelius Scipio Asiagenus (cos. 83), a Marian partisan, who was pro¬ 
scribed and escaped to Massilia, where he died. 

4 The brothers M. Marcellus (cos. 51) and C. Marcellus (49) and their cousin 
C. Claudius C. f. Marcellus (50). No consul since their great-grandfather (cos. 111, 
152). 



44 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIIJS 

Pompeius and alliance with the Lentuli may not unfairly be 
surmised. 1 

The patrician Cornelii Lentuli were noted more for pride of 
birth and political caution than for public splendour or con¬ 
spicuous ability in war and peace. They sought to profit by help 
from Pompeius without incurring feuds or damage. Certain of 
the Lentuli had served under Pompeius in Spain and in the East: 2 
five consulates in this generation rewarded their sagacity. 3 

With these four families was now joined the faction of Cato. 
Of his allies and relatives, Lucullus and Hortensius were dead, 
but the group was still formidable, including his nephew M. 
Junius Brutus and the husbands of his sister and daughter, 
namely L. Domitius Ahenobarbus and M. Calpurnius Bibulus. 
To loyal support of Cato, Ahenobarbus and Brutus joined a 
sacred vendetta against Pompeius. For Cato or for the Republic 
they postponed vengeance, but did not forget a brother and 
father slain by the young Pompeius in a foul and treacherous 
fashion. Ahenobarbus was a great political dynast in his own 
right, born to power. The Pact of Luca blocked him from his con¬ 
sulate, but only for a year. lie had another grievance—Caesar’s 
tenure of Gaul beyond the Alps robbed him of a province to 
which he asserted a hereditary claim. 4 As for Bibulus, he smarted 
still beneath the humiliation of authority set at nought and 
fruitless contests with the consul and the tribunes of Pompeius. 

It was later claimed by their last survivor that the party of 
the Republic and camp of Pompeius embraced ten men of 


1 Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus (cos. 72) was a plebeian by birth (Cicero, 
De imp. Cn. Pompei 58), hence probably a Claudius Marcellus. Likewise the father 
of Marcellinus (cos. 56), cf. P-W iv, 1390. 

2 Not that they were all, or consistently, allies of Pompeius: Lentulus Sura 
(cos. 71) was expelled from the Senate by the censors of 70. But Clodianus (cos. 72, 
censor 70) was a legate in the Pirate War (Appian, Mithr. 95) and so was Marcel¬ 
linus (ib. and the inscr. from Cyrcne, SIG* 750). Both had probably served under 
Pompeius in Spain (Marcellinus is attested by coins, BMC, R. Rep. 11, 491 f.). 
The Gaditane L. Cornelius Balbus later acknowledged an especial tie of loyalty 
to L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus (cos. 49), cf. Ad Att. 9, 7b, 2; 8, 15a, 2. This is 
evidence for the origin of Balbus’ gentilicium —and for Lentulus’ service in Spain. 

3 Namely Clodianus (72), Sura (71), Spinther (57), Marcellinus (56) and Crus 
(49). The precise family relationships of the various Cornelii Lentuli in this period 
are highly problematical (P-W iv, 1381 ; 1389; 1393). 

4 Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 122) had been largely responsible for the 
conquest and organization of that province. Hence the spread of the name 
‘Domitius’ there, attested for example by the inscr. ILS 6976 from Nemausus, 
and later by provincial notables like Cn. Domitius Afer (cos. stiff, a.d. 39) and 
Domitius Decidius (Tacitus, Agr. 6, 1; ILS 966). Note also the championing of 
a wronged Gaul by Cn. Domitius (cos. 96), Cicero, In Verrem 11, 1, 118. 



THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 45 

consular rank. 1 With the consuls of the last year of the Republic 
conveniently added, the array is impressive and instructive. In 
the first place, Pompeius and his decorative father-in-law, Q. 
Metellus Scipio, two Lentuli and two IVIarcelli. 2 Then came the 
enigmatic Appius Claudius Pulcher, proud, corrupt and super¬ 
stitious, in his person the symbol and link of the whole coalition: 
himself the son of a Caecilia Metella and husband of a Servilia, 
he gave one daughter for wife to Pompeius’ elder son, another 
to Cato’s nephew Brutus. 3 Cato himself had not reached the con¬ 
sulate, but two consulars followed, the stubborn and irascible 
Bibulus, and Ahenobarbus, energetic but very stupid. The tail 
of the procession is brought up by Sulpicius Rufus, a timid and 
respectable jurist lacking in pronounced political opinions, and 
two novi homines , the Pompeian general Afranius and the orator 
Cicero, pathetically loyal to a leader of whose insincerity he could 
recall such palpable and painful testimony. The party of the 
Republic was no place for a novus homo : the Lentuli were synony¬ 
mous with aristocratic pride, Ap. Claudius took a peculiar delight 
in rebuffing or harrying Cicero, and the Metelli had given him a 
pointed reminder of the dignitas of their house. 4 

It was the oligarchy of Sulla, manifest and menacing in its last 
bid for power, serried but insecure. Pompeius was playing a 
double game. He hoped to employ the leading nobiles to destroy 
Caesar, whether it came to war or not, in either way gaining the 
mastery. They were not duped—they knew Pompeius: but they 
fancied that Pompeius, weakened by the loss of his ally and of 
popular support, would be in their power at last, amenable to 
guidance or to be discarded if recalcitrant. 


1 Cicero, Phil. 13, 28 f.: not veracious, however, for two of the alleged Pompeian 
consulars (‘quos civis, quos viros!’), namely M. Marcellus (cos. 51) and Ser. 
Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51), dismayed by the outbreak of war or distrustful of 
Pompeius, took no active part and should more honestly be termed neutrals (P-W 
in, 2762 ; iv a, 853 f.). Rufus actually sent his son to join Caesar, Ad Att. 9, 18, 2. 
The laudatory epithets here attached by Cicero to the other consulars will not mis¬ 
lead : too much is known about these people. 

z The Lentuli were Spinther (cos. 57) and Crus (49); the Marcelli, Marcus 
(cos. 51) and Gaius (49). For the kinship between these two families, above, p. 44, 
n. 1. Spinther’s son married a Caecilia Metella (Ad Att. 13, 7, 1). 

3 Brutus’ marriage to a daughter of Ap. Claudius Pulcher certainly took place 
in 54 h.c. (Ad Jam. 3, 4, 2), that of Cn. Pompeius probably about the same time 
(ib.). The younger son, Sextus, married the daughter of L. Scribonius Libo 
(coi. 34 B.C.), cf. below, p. 228. On the character of Ap. Pulcher, P-W in, 2849 ff. 

4 Celer to Cicero (Ad fam. 5, 1, 1): ‘familiae nostrae dignitas.’ Cicero uses the 
words ‘Appietas’ and ‘Lentulitas’, ib. 3, 7, 5. He had ample cause to complain 
of Appius. 



46 THE DOMINATION OF POMPEIUS 

The policy arose from the brain and will of Marcus Cato. His 
allies, eager to enlist a man of principle on their side, cele¬ 
brated as integrity what was often conceit or stupidity and mis¬ 
took craft for sagacity. They might have known better—Cato’s 
stubborn refusal to agree to the land bill for Pompeius’ veterans 
only led to worse evils and a subverting of the constitution. After 
long strife against the domination of Pompeius, Cato resolved 
to support a dictatorship, though anxiously shunning the name. 
Cato’s confidence in his own rectitude and insight derived secret 
strength from the antipathy which he felt for the person and 
character of Caesar. 

The influence and example of Cato spurred on the nobiles and 
accelerated war. Helped by the power, the prestige, and the 
illicit armies of Pompeius Magnus (stationed already on Italian 
soil or now being recruited for the government and on the plea 
of legitimacy), a faction in the Senate worked the constitution 
against Caesar. The proconsul refused to yield. 



IV. CAESAR THE DICTATOR 


S ULLA was the first Roman to lead an army against Rome. 

Not of his own choosing—his enemies had won control 
of the government and deprived him of the command against 
Mithridates. Again, when he landed in Italy after an absence of 
nearly five years, force was his only defence against the party 
that had attacked a proconsul who was fighting the wars of the 
Republic in the East. Sulla had all the ambition of a Roman 
noble: but it was not his ambition to seize power through civil 
strife and hold it, supreme and alone. His work done, the Dictator 
resigned. 

Idle conquest of Gaul, the war against Pompeius and the 
establishment of the Dictatorship of Caesar are events that move 
in a harmony so swift and sure as to appear pre-ordained; and 
history has sometimes been written as though Caesar set the tune 
from the beginning, in the knowledge that monarchy was the 
panacea for the world’s ills, and with the design to achieve it 
by armed force. 1 Such a view is too simple to be historical. 

Caesar strove to avert any resort to open wTir. Both before and 
after the outbreak of hostilities he sought to negotiate with 
Pompeius. Had Pompeius listened and consented to an inter¬ 
view, their old amicilia might have been repaired. With the 
nominal primacy of Pompeius recognized, Caesar and his ad¬ 
herents w'ould capture the government—and perhaps reform the 
State. Caesar’s enemies were afraid of that—and so was Pom¬ 
peius. After long wavering Pompeius chose at last to save the 
oligarchy. Further, the proconsul’s proposals as conveyed to the 
Senate were moderate and may not be dismissed as mere 
manoeuvres for position or for time to bring up his armies. 2 
Caesar knew T how small was the party willing to provoke a war. 
As the artful motion of a Caesarian tribune had revealed, an 
overwhelming majority in the Senate, nearly four hundred against 
twenty-two, wished both dynasts to lay down their extraordinary 
commands. 3 A rash and factious minority prevailed. 

1 As, for example, by Mommsen, and recently by Carcopino, Points dc vue sur 
Vimperialism? romain (1934), 89 ff.; Histoire romaine 11: Char (1936). 

2 He offered to keep only the Cisalpina, or even Illyricum, with a single legion 
(Appian, BC 2, 32, 126; Plutarch, Caesar 31; Suetonius, Divus Iulius 29, 2). 

3 Appian, BC 2, 30, 119. 



48 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

The precise legal points at issue in Caesar’s claim to stand 
for the consulate in absence and retain his province until the end 
of the year 49 b.c. are still matters of controversy. 1 If they were 
ever clear, debate and misrepresentation soon clouded truth and 
equity. The nature of the political crisis is less obscure. Caesar 
and his associates in power had thwarted or suspended the con¬ 
stitution for their own ends many times in the past. Exceptions 
had been made before in favour of other dynasts; and Caesar 
asserted both legal and moral rights to preferential treatment. 
In the last resort his rank, prestige and honour, summed up in 
the Latin word dignitas , were all at stake: to Caesar, as he claimed, 
‘his dignitas had ever been dearer than life itself.’ 2 Sooner than 
surrender it, Caesar appealed to arms. A constitutional pretext 
was provided by the violence of his adversaries: Caesar stood 
in defence of the rights of the tribunes and the liberties of the 
Roman People. But that was not the plea which Caesar himself 
valued most—it was his personal honour. 

His enemies appeared to have triumphed. They had driven 
a wedge between the two dynasts, winning over to their side 
the power and prestige of Pompeius. They would be able to 
deal with Pompeius later. It might not come to open war; and 
Pompeius was still in their control so long as he was not at the 
head of an army in the field. Upon Caesar they had thrust 
the choice between civil war and political extinction. But Caesar 
refused to join the long roll of Pompeius’ victims, to be super¬ 
seded like Lucullus, to be discarded and disgraced as had been 
Gabinius, the governor of Syria. If he gave way now, it was the 
end. Returning to Rome a private citizen, Caesar would at once 
be prosecuted by his enemies for extortion or treason. They 
would secure lawyers reputed for eloquence, high principle and 
patriotism. Cato was waiting for him, rancorous and incorrup¬ 
tible. A jury carefully selected, with moral support from soldiers 
of Pompeius stationed around the court, would bring in the inevi¬ 
table verdict. After that, nothing for Caesar but to join the exiled 
Milo at Massilia and enjoy the red mullet and Hellenic culture 
of that university city. 3 

Caesar was constrained to appeal to his army for protection. 

1 What is commonly called the ‘Rechtsfrage’, and interminably discussed, 
depends upon a ‘Machtfragr’. 

x BC 1, 9, 2: ‘sibi semper primam fuisse dignitatem vitaque potiorem’; cf. i, 
7, 7; 8 , 3 ; 3, 91, 2; BG 8 , 52, 4; Suetonius, Divus Iulius 33 ; 72; Cicero, Ad Att. 7, 
11, j: ‘atque haec ait omnia facere se dignitatis causa.’ Cf. above, p. 13, n. 2. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Julius 30, 3 (mentioning Cato and Milo). 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 49 

At last the enemies of Caesar had succeeded in ensnaring Pom- 
peius and in working the constitution against the craftiest politi¬ 
cian of the day: he was declared a public enemy if he did not lay 
down his command before a certain day. By invoking constitu¬ 
tional sanctions against Caesar, a small faction misrepresented the 
true wishes of a vast majority in the Senate, in Rome, and in 
Italy. They pretended that the issue lay between a rebellious pro- 
consul and legitimate authority. Such venturesome expedients 
are commonly the work of hot blood and muddled heads. The 
error was double and damning. Disillusion followed swiftly. 
Even Cato was dismayed. 1 It had confidently been expected that 
the solid and respectable classes in the towns of Italy would 
rally in defence of the authority of the Senate and the liberties 
of the Roman People, that all the land would rise as one man 
against the invader. Nothing of the kind happened. Italy was 
apathetic to the war-cry of the Republic in danger, sceptical 
about its champions. 

The very virtues for which the propertied classes were sedu¬ 
lously praised by politicians at Rome forbade intervention in a 
struggle which was not their own. 2 Pompeius might stamp with 
his foot in the land of Italy, as he had rashly boasted. No armed 
legions rose at his call. Even Picenum, his own barony, went 
over to the enemy without a blow. No less complete the military 
miscalculation: the imperator did not answer to his repute as a 
soldier. Insecurity and the feeling of guilt, added to inadequate 
preparation for war, may have impaired his decision. 3 Yet his 
plan was no mere makeshift, as it appeared to his allies, but 
subtle and grandiose—to evacuate Italy, leaving Caesar entrapped 
between the legions of Spain and the hosts of all the East, and 
then to return, like Sulla, to victory and to power. 4 

Caesar, it is true, had only a legion to hand: the bulk of his 
army was still far away. But he swept down the eastern 
coast of Italy, gathering troops, momentum and confidence as 
he went. Within two months of the crossing of the Rubicon 
he was master of Italy. Pompeius made his escape across the 
Adriatic carrying with him several legions and a large number of 
senators, a grievous burden of revenge and recrimination. The 

1 Ad Att. 7, 15, 2: ‘Cato enim ipse iam servire quam pugnare mavult.* 

2 lb. 8, 13, 2: ‘nihil prorsus aliud curant nisi agros, nisi villulas, nisi nummulos 
suos.’ Cf. ib. 7, 7, 5; 8, 16, 1. 

3 Pompeius’ illness in the summer of 50 b.c. may not have been wholly due to 
physical causes. 

4 Cf. E. Meyer, Caesars Monarchic 3 , 299 ff. 



50 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

enemies of Caesar had counted upon capitulation or a short and 
easy war. 

They had lost the first round. Then a second blow, quite 
beyond calculation: before the summer was out the generals 
of Pompeius in Spain were outmanoeuvred and overcome. Yet 
even so, until the legions joined battle on the plain of Pharsalus, 
the odds lay heavily against Caesar. Fortune, the devotion of 
his veteran legionaries and the divided counsels of his adver¬ 
saries secured the crowning victory. But three years more of 
fighting were needed to stamp out the last and bitter resistance 
of the Pompeian cause in Africa and in Spain. 

‘They would have it thus/ said Caesar as he gazed upon the 
Roman dead at Pharsalus, half in patriot grief for the havoc of 
civil war, half in impatience and resentment. 1 They had cheated 
Caesar of the true glory of a Roman aristocrat—to contend with 
his peers for primacy, not to destroy them. Ilis enemies had 
the laugh of him in death. Even Pharsalus was not the end. 
His former ally, the great Pompeius, glorious from victories in all 
quarters of the world, lay unburied on an Egyptian beach, slain 
by a renegade Roman, the hireling of a foreign king. Dead, too, 
and killed by Romans, were Caesar’s rivals and enemies, many 
illustrious consulars. Ahenobarbus fought and fell at Pharsalus, 
and Q. Mctcllus Scipio ended worthy of his ancestors; 2 while 
Cato chose to fall by his own hand rather than witness the 
domination of Caesar and the destruction of the Free State. 

That was the nemesis of ambition and glory, to be thwarted 
in the end. After such wreckage, the task of rebuilding con¬ 
fronted him, stern and thankless. Without the sincere and 
patriotic co-operation of the governing class, the attempt would 
be all in vain, the mere creation of arbitrary power, doomed to 
perish in violence. 

It was rational to suspend judgement about the guilt of the 
Civil War. 3 Pompeius had been little better, if at all, than his 
younger and more active rival, a spurious and disquieting cham¬ 
pion of legitimate authority when men recalled the earlier career 
and inordinate ambition of the Sullan partisan who had first 

1 Suetonius, Dims Julius 30, 4 (reporting Pollio): ‘hoc voluerunt; tantis rebus 
gestis Oaius Caesar condernnatus essem, nisi ab cxercitu auxilium petissem.* 

2 Livy, Per. 114: ‘imperator se bene habet.’ 

3 Lucan, Pharsalia 1, 12C fL: 

quis iustius induit arma 
scire nefas. magno se iudicc quisque tuetur: 

\ictrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catoni. 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 51 

defied and then destroyed the Senate’s rule. Each had sought 
armed domination. 1 Had Pompeius conquered in battle, the 
Republic could hardly have survived. A few years, and Pompeius 
the Dictator would have been assassinated in the Senate by 
honourable men, at the foot of his own statue. 

That was not the point. The cause of Pompeius had become 
the better cause. Caesar could not compete. Though interest 
on each side claimed more adherents than principle, interest 
with the Pompeians usurped the respectable garb of legality. 
Many of Caesar’s partisans were frank adventurers, avid for gain 
and advancement, some for revolution. 

Yet for all that, in the matter of Caesar’s party the contrast 
of disreputable scoundrels on the one side and high-born patriots 
on the other is as schematic and misleading as the contrast 
between the aspirant to autocracy and the forces of law and 
order. Caesar’s following was heterogeneous in composition—at 
its kernel a small group of men paramount in social distinction, 
not merely nobiles but patrician; on the outer fringe, many excel¬ 
lent Roman knights, The flower of Italy’. The composition of 
Caesar’s party and the character of those adherents with whom 
he supplemented the Senate and reinforced the oligarchy of 
government, an important topic, demands separate treatment. 2 

Many senators tried to remain neutral, including several emi¬ 
nent consulars, some of whom Caesar won to sympathy, if not 
to active support, by his studious moderation. To the survivors 
of the defeated faction he behaved with public and ostentatious 
clemency. They were members of his own class: he had not 
wished to make war upon them or to exterminate the Roman 
aristocracy. But these proud adversaries did not alvvay^ leap 
forward with alacrity to be exhibited as object-lessons of the 
dementia and magnitudo animi of Caesar. They took the gift of 
life and restoration with suppressed resentment: some refused 
even to ask. 3 

Under these unfavourable auspices, a Sulla but for dementia , 
a Gracchus but lacking a revolutionary programme, Caesar estab¬ 
lished his Dictatorship. His rule began as the triumph of a 
faction in civil war: he made it his task to transcend faction, 
and in so doing wrought his own destruction. A champion of 
the People, he had to curb the People’s rights, as Sulla had done. 

1 Ad Att. 8, 11, 2: ‘dominatio quaesita ab utroque est’; ib.: ‘uterque regnare 

vult.’ 2 Below, c. V and c. VI. 

3 For example, Ahcnobarbus’ son (Cicero, Phil. 2, 27). 



52 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

To rule, he needed the support of the nobiles , yet he had to 
curtail their privileges and repress their dangerous ambitions. 

In name and function Caesar’s office was to set the State in 
order again (rei publicae constituendae). Despite odious memories 
of Sulla, the choice of the Dictatorship was recommended by 
its comprehensive powers and freedom from the tribunician veto. 
Caesar knew that secret enemies would soon direct that deadly 
weapon against one who had used it with such dexterity in 
the past and who more recently claimed to be asserting the 
rights of the tribunes, the liberty of the Roman People. He 
was not mistaken. Yet he required special powers: after a civil 
war the need was patent. The Dictator’s task might well demand 
several years. In 46 b.c. his powers were prolonged to a tenure 
of ten years, an ominous sign. A gleam of hope that the 
emergency period would be quite short flickered up for a 
moment, to wane at once and perish utterly. 1 In January 44 
B.c. Caesar was voted the Dictatorship for life. About the 
same time decrees of the Senate ordained that an oath of 
allegiance should be taken in his name. 2 Was this the measure 
of his ordering of the Roman State? Was this a res publica 
constituta ? 

It was disquieting. Little had been done to repair the ravages 
of civil war .and promote social regeneration. For that there 
was sore need, as both his adherents and his former adversaries 
pointed out. From Pompeius, from Cato and from the oligarchy, 
no hope of reform. But Caesar seemed different: he had con¬ 
sistently advocated the cause of the oppressed, whether Roman, 
Italian or provincial. He had shown that he was not afraid of 
vested interests. But Caesar was not a revolutionary. He soon 
disappointed the rapacity or the idealism of certain of his partisans 
who had hoped for an assault upon the moneyed classes, a drastic 
reduction of debts and a programme of revolution that should be 
radical and genuine. 3 Only the usurers approved of Caesar, so 

1 Ad Jam. 4, 4, 3 (after the pardoning of M. Marcellus). 

2 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 84, 2: ‘senatus consultum, quo omnia simul ei divina 

atque humana decrevcrat, item ius iurandum, quo se cuncti pro salute unius 
astrmxcrant’; Appian,in several passages, esp .BC 2,145,604: Kal av 81s aveycyvojcrKe 
rovs opKOVs t rj fjLrju <f)vXd^CLV Kaiaapa Kal to Kaiaapos crtD/aa rravrl adeuet nauras, 
77 ec ns imflovAevaeiev, elvat tovs ovk dpujvavra 9 avrat. On which cf. 

now A. v. Premerstein, ‘Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats’, Abh. der bayer. 
Ak. der Wiss., phil.-hist. Abt ., N.F. 15 (1937), 32 ff. Premerstein argues that this 
was a general oath, not confined to senators. 

3 If the Sallustian Epistidae ad Caesarem senem could be taken as genuine, or even 
contemporary, they would provide valuable evidence of strong anti-capitalistic 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 53 

Caelius complained quite early in the Civil War. 1 Not everybody 
was as outspoken or as radical as Caelius, who passed from words 
to deeds and perished in an armed rising. Cicero, when lauding 
the clemency and magnanimity of the Dictator, took the oppor¬ 
tunity to sketch a modest programme of moral and social reform. 2 
Having written treatises about the Roman Commonwealth some 
years earlier, he may have expected to be consulted upon these 
weighty matters. But Cicero’s hopes of res public a constituta were 
soon dashed. The Dictator himself expressed alarming opinions 
about the res publica —‘it was only a name: Sulla, by resigning 
supreme power, showed that he was an ignorant fellow’. 3 

Caesar postponed decision about the permanent ordering of 
the State. It was too difficult. Instead, he would set out for the 
wars again, to Macedonia and to the eastern frontier of the 
Empire. At Rome he was hampered: abroad he might enjoy his 
conscious mastery of men and events, as before in Gaul. Easy 
victories—but not the urgent needs of the Roman People. 

About Caesar’s ultimate designs there can be opinion, but no 
certainty. The acts and projects of his Dictatorship do not 
reveal them. For the rest, the evidence is partisan—or posthu¬ 
mous. No statement of unrealized intentions is a safe guide to 
history, for it is unverifiable and therefore the most attractive 
form of misrepresentation. The enemies of Caesar spread 
rumours to discredit the living Dictator: Caesar dead became 
a god and a myth, passing from the realm of history into literature 
and legend, declamation and propaganda. By Augustus he was 
exploited in two ways. The avenging of Caesar fell to his adopted 
son who assumed the title of Divi filius as consecration for the 
ruler of Rome. That was all he affected to inherit from Caesar, 
the halo. The god was useful, but not the Dictator: Augustus 
was careful sharply to discriminate between Dictator and Prm- 
ceps. Under his rule Caesar the Dictator was either suppressed 
outright or called up from time to time to enhance the contrast 
between the unscrupulous adventurer who destroyed the Free 

tendencies; cf. 1,8,3: ‘verum haec ct omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniae desi- 
ncnt, si neque magistratus neque alia volgo cupienda venalia erunt’; 2, 7, 10: ‘ergo 
in primis auctoritatem pecuniae demito.’ 1 Ad Jam. 8, 17, 2. 

2 Pro Marcello 23: ‘constituenda iudicia, revocanda fides, comprimendae libi- 
dines, propaganda suboles, omnia quae dilapsa iam diffluxerunt severis legibus 
vincienda sunt.’ Caesar carried moral and sumptuary legislation (Suetonius, Divus 
Iulius 42 f.): the title of praefectus moribus did not make him any more popular 
( Adfam . 9, 15, 5). 

3 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 77, reporting an unsafe witness, the Pompeian T. Ampius 
Balbus. But cf. Caesar’s favourite quotation about tyranny (Cicero, Dc off , 3, 82). 



54 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

State in his ambition and the modest magistrate who restored the 
Republic. In its treatment of Caesar the inspired literature of the 
Augustan Principatc is consistent and instructive. Though in 
different words, Virgil, Horace and Livy tell the same tale and 
point the same moral. 1 

Yet speculation cannot be debarred from playing round the 
high and momentous theme of the last designs of Caesar the 
Dictator. It has been supposed and contended that Caesar 
either desired to establish or had actually inaugurated an institu¬ 
tion unheard of in Rome and unimagined there—monarchic 
rule, despotic and absolute, based upon worship of the ruler, 
after the pattern of the monarchies of the Hellenistic East. Thus 
may Caesar be represented as the heir in all things of Alexander 
the Macedonian and as the anticipator of Caracalla, a king and a 
god incarnate, levelling class and nation, ruling a subject, united 
and uniform world by right divine. 2 

This extreme simplification of long and diverse ages of history 
seems to suggest that Caesar alone of contemporary Roman states¬ 
men possessed either a wide vision of the future or a singular and 
elementary blindness to the present. But this is only a Caesar of 
myth or rational construction, a lay-figure set up to point a contrast 
with Pompeius or Augustus —as though Augustus did not assume 
a more than human name and found a monarchy, complete with 
court and hereditary succession; as though Pompeius, the con¬ 
queror of the East and of every continent, did not exploit for his 
own vanity the resemblance to Alexander in warlike fame and 
even in bodily form. 3 Caesar was a truer Roman than either of 
them. 

The complete synthesis in the person of Caesar of hereditary 
monarchy and divine worship is difficult to establish on the best 
of contemporary evidence, the voluminous correspondence ol 
Cicero. 4 Moreover, the whole theme of divine honours is fertile 


1 Below, p. 317 f. 

2 Compare especially E. Meyer, Iiist . Zeitschr. xei (1903), 385 ff. -- Kl. Schr 
I* (1924), 423 ff.; Caesars Monarchic', 508 fF. Against, F. E. Adcock, CAH ix 
718 ff., and remarks hv the present writer, BSR Papers xiv (1938), 1 ff. 

3 Sallust, Hist. 3, 88 m: ‘sed Pompeius a prima adulcscentia sermone fautorurr 
similem se fore crcdens Alexandro regi, facta consultaque cius quidem aemuku 
erat’; Plutarch, Pompeius 2. On the orientalism of Pompeius, cf. Carcopino 
Histoire romainv 11, 597. 

4 As W. Warde Fowler points out, his Roman contemporaries do not seem tc 
have taken much interest in the matter, Roman Ideas of Deity (1914), 112 ff. Phil. 2 
no, however, is a difficult passage. Yet it can hardly be proved that Caesai 
devised a comprehensive policy of ruler-worship. 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 55 

in misunderstandings. 1 After death Caesar was enrolled among 
the gods of the Roman State by the interested device of the 
leaders of the Caesarian party. It might appear that subsequent 
accounts have been guilty of attributing a part at least of the cult 
of Divus Julius to that very different person, Caesar the Dictator. 

The rule of Caesar could well be branded as monarchy on a 
partisan or conventional estimate. The terms ‘rex’ and ‘regnunT 
belong to the vocabulary of Roman political invective, applicable 
alike to the domination of Sulia and the arbitrary power exer¬ 
cised by Cicero during his consulate—for the new man from 
Arpinum was derided as ‘the first foreign king at Rome since 
the Tarquinii’. 2 It was io silence rumour that Caesar made an 
ostentatious refusal of the diadem at a public ceremony. ‘Caesarem 
se, non regem esse.’ 3 Beyond doubt the Dictator’s powers were as 
considerable as those of a monarch. Caesar would‘have been 
the first to admit it: he needed neither the name nor the diadem. 
But monarchy presupposes hereditary succession, for which no 
pr >vision was made by Caesar. The heir to Caesar’s name, 
his grand-nephew, attracted little attention at the time of his 
first appearance in Rome. The young man had to build up a 
faction for himself and make his own way along the road to 
power, beginning as a military demagogue. 

If Caesar must be judged, it is by facts and not by alleged 
intentions. As his acts and his writings reveal him, Caesar 
stands out as a realist and an opportunist, in the short time 
at his disposal he can hardly have made plans for a long future 
or laid the foundation of a consistent government. Whatever it 
might be, it would owe more to the needs of the moment than to 
alien or theoretical models. More important the business in 
hand: it was expedited in swift and arbitrary fashion. Caesar 
made plans and decisions in the company of his intimates and 
secretaries: the Senate voted but did not deliberate. As the 
Dictator was on the point of departing in the spring of 44 b.c. 
for several years of campaigning in the Balkans and the East, 
he tied up magistracies and provincial commands in advance by 
placing them, according to the traditional Roman way, in the 
hands of loyal partisans, or of reconciled Pompeians whose good 
sense should guarantee peace. For that period, at least, a salutary 
pause from political activity: with the lapse of time the situation 
might become clearer in one way or another. 

1 A. D. Nock, CAH x, 489 (with reference to honours paiH to Augustus). 

2 Cicero, Pro Sulla 22. 3 Suetonius, Divus Julius 79, 2. 



56 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

At the moment it was intolerable: the autocrat became im¬ 
patient, annoyed by covert opposition, petty criticism and lauda¬ 
tions of dead Cato. That he was unpopular he well knew. 1 ‘For all 
his genius, Caesar could not see a way out’, as one of his friends 
was subsequently to remark. 2 And there was no going back. 
To Caesar’s clear mind and love of rapid decision, this brought 
a tragic sense of impotence and frustration—he had been all things 
and it was no good. 3 He had surpassed the good fortune of Sulla 
Felix and the glory of Pompeius Magnus. In vain—reckless am¬ 
bition had ruined the Roman State and baffled itself in the end. 4 
Of the melancholy that descended upon Caesar there stands the 
best of testimony—‘my life has been long enough, whether 
reckoned in years or in renown.’ The words were remembered. 
The most eloquent of his contemporaries did not disdain to 
plagiarize them. 5 

The question of ultimate intentions becomes irrelevant. Caesar 
was slain for what he was, not for what he might become. 6 
The assumption of a Dictatorship for life seemed to mock and 
dispel all hope of a return to normal and constitutional govern¬ 
ment. His rule was far worse than the violent and illegal domination 
of Pompeius. The present was unbearable, the future hopeless. 
It was necessary to strike at once—absence, the passage of time 
and the solid benefits of peace and order might abate men’s 
resentment against Caesar, insensibly disposing their minds to 
servitude and monarchy. A faction recruited from the most 

1 His imperious and arrogant temper was noted by contemporaries, who recalled 
his behaviour towards certain of the principes of the Sullan oligarchy, Catulus 
(Velleius 2, 43, 3) and Lucullus (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 20, 4). Suetonius (ib. 22, 
2) reports a boastful remark in 59 B.c.—‘invitis etgementibus adversariis adeptum 
sc quae concupisset, proinde ex eo insultaturum omnium capitibus.* For aware¬ 
ness of his unpopularity cf. Ad Att. 14, 1,2 (Caesar’s words): ‘ego dubitem quin 
summo in odio sim quom M. Cicero sedeat nec suo commodo me convenire 
possit? atqui si quisquam est facilis, hie est. tamen non dubito quin me male 
oderit.’ 

2 Matius, quoted in Ad Att. 14, 1, 1: ‘etenim si ille tali ingenio exitum non 
reperiebat, quis nunc reperiet?’ 

J As the Historia Augusta , pertinent for once but not perhaps authentic, reports 
of an Emperor ( SHA Severus 18, 11): ‘omnia fui et nihil expedit.’ 

4 Cicero, De off. 1, 26: ‘declaravit id modo temeritas C. Caesaris, qui omnia iura 
divina et humana pervertit propter eum, quern sibi ipse opinionis errore tinxerat, 
principatum. est autem in hoc genere molestum, quod in maximis animis splen- 
didissimisque ingeniis plerumque exsistunt honoris imperii potentiae gloriae 
cupiditates.’ 

5 Cicero, Phil. 1, 38 and Ad fam. 10, 1, 1, adapting to himself the phrase 
‘satis diu vel naturae vixi vel gloriae’ ( Pro Marcello 25, cf. Suetonius, Divus Iulius 
86, 2). 

6 F. E. Adcock, CAH ix, 724. 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 57 

diverse elements planned and carried out the assassination of the 
Dictator. 

That his removal would be no remedy but a source of greater 
ills to the Commonwealth, the Dictator himself observed. 1 His 
judgement was vindicated in blood and suffering; and posterity 
has seen fit to condemn the act of the Liberators, for so they 
were styled, as worse than a crime —a folly. The verdict is hasty 
and judges by results. It is all too easy to label the assassins as 
fanatic adepts of Greek theories about the supreme virtue of 
tyrannicide, blind to the true nature of political catch-words 
and the urgent needs of the Roman State. The character and 
pursuits of Marcus Brutus, the representative figure in the con¬ 
spiracy, might lend plausible colouring to such a theory. Yet it 
is in no way evident that the nature of Brutus would have been 
very different had he never opened a book of Stoic or Academic 
philosophy. Moreover, the originator of the plot, the dour and 
military Cassius, was of the Epicurean persuasion and by no means 
a fanatic. 2 As for the tenets of the Stoics, they could support 
doctrines quite distasteful to Roman Republicans, namely 
monarchy or the brotherhood of man. The Stoic teaching, indeed, 
was nothing more than a corroboration and theoretical defence of 
certain traditional virtues of the governing class in an aristocratic 
and republican state. Hellenic culture does not explain Cato ; 3 and 
the virtus about which Brutus composed a volume was a Roman 
quality, not an alien importation. 

The word means courage, the ultimate virtue of a free man. 
With virtus go libertas and fides, blending in a proud ideal of 
character and conduct—constancy in purpose and act, indepen¬ 
dence of habit, temper and speech, honesty and loyalty. Privi¬ 
lege and station imposed duties, to family, class and equals in 
the first place, but also towards clients and dependents. 4 No 

1 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 86, 2: *rem publicam, si quid sibi eveniret, neque 
quietam fore et aliquanto detcriore condicione civilia bella subituram.’ 

1 Cassius ( Adfam. 15, 19, 4) describes Caesar as ‘veterem et clementem domi- 
num’. 

3 Enhanced in importance through Cato’s martyr-death and posthumous fame, 
his studies in Greek philosophy were already an object of misrepresentation to his 
contemporaries (Cicero, Pro Murena 61 ff.; cf. Ad Att. 2, 1,8: ‘dicit enim tamquam 
in Platonis 7roAireta, non tamquam in Romuli faece sententiam’). Again, ‘Sallust* 
(Ad Caesarem 2, 9, 3) is neither just nor relevant when he observes: ‘unius tamen 
M. Catonis ingemum versutum loquax callidum baud contemno. parantur haec 
disciplina Graecorum. sed virtus vigilantia labor apud Graecos nulla sunt.’ 

4 This feature has been duly emphasized by Gelzer (P-W x, ioo5f.), with 
examples of Brutus* devotion to the welfare of his clients. Brutus wrote a book 
with the title De officiis (Seneca, Epp. 95, 45). The code was certainly narrow—but 



58 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

oligarchy could survive if its members refused to abide by the 
rules, to respect ‘liberty and the laws'. 

To his contemporaries, Marcus Brutus, firm in spirit, upright 
and loyal, in manner grave and aloof, seemed to embody that 
ideal of character, admired by those who did not care to imitate. 
His was not a simple personality—but passionate, intense and 
repressed. 1 Nor was his political conduct wholly to be predicted. 
Brutus might w r ell have been a Caesarian—neither he nor Caesar 
were predestined partisans of Pompeius. Servilia reared her 
son to hate Pompeius, schemed for the Caesarian alliance and 
designed that Brutus should marry Caesar's daughter. 2 Pier 
plan was annulled by the turn of events in the fatal consulate 
of Metellus. Caesar was captured by Pompeius: Julia, the bride 
intended for Brutus, pledged the alliance. 

After this the paths of Brutus and of Caesar diverged sharply 
for eleven years. But Brutus, after Pharsalus, at once gave up a 
lost cause, receiving pardon from Caesar, high favour, a pro¬ 
vincial command and finally the praetorship in 44 b.c. Yet 
Cato, no sooner dead, asserted the old domination over his 
nephew more powerfully than ever in life. Brutus came to feel 
shame for his own disloyalty: he composed a pamphlet in honour 
of the Republican who died true to his principles and to his 
class. Then he strengthened the family tie and obligation of 
vengeance yet further by divorcing his Claudia and marrying 
his cousin Porcia, Bibulus’ widow. No mistake about the mean¬ 
ing of that act; and Servilia disapproved. There were deeper 
causes still in Brutus* resolve to slay the tyrant—envy of Caesar 
and the memory of Caesar’s amours with Servilia, public and 
notorious. Above all, to Brutus as to Cato, who stood by the 
ancient ideals, it seemed that Caesar, avid for splendour, glory and 
power, ready to use his birth and station to subvert his own 
class, was an ominous type, the monarchic aristocrat, recalling 
the kings of Rome and fatal to any Republic. 

not by contemporary standards. Brutus’ good repute has been prejudiced by the 
regrettable affair of the Salaminian senators, The figure of interest demanded 
(48 per cent.) was high but not unparalleled in such transactions ( SJG 3 748, 36): 
Brutus, invoking the sanctity of contracts, might have urged that, after all, they had 
‘hired the money’. 

1 As Caesar observed, ‘magni refert hie quid velit, sed quicquid vult valde vult’ 
(Ad Att. 14, 1,2); Quintilian (10, 1, 123), on the oratory of Brutus: ‘scias eum 
sentire quae dicit’; cf. Tacitus, Dial. 25, 0 : ‘simpliciter et ingenue’. 

2 Above, p. 35. Before the outbreak of the Civil War Brutus had refused even to 
speak to Pompeius: /carrot nporepov dnaurijaas ovSi npooreLne rou IIop,7nji'ou t ayo? 
yyovpev 09 ptya Trarpos <f>ov€l SiaXeyeaOai (Plutarch, Brutus 4, cf. Pompeius 64). 



CAESAR THE DICTATOR 59 

Brutus and his allies might invoke philosophy or an ancestor 
who had liberated Rome from the Tarquinii, the first consul of 
the Republic and founder of Libertas. Dubious history—and 
irrelevant. 1 The Liberators knew what they were about. Honour¬ 
able men grasped the assassin’s dagger to slay a Roman aristocrat, 
a friend and a benefactor, for better reasons than that. They 
stood, not merely for the traditions and the institutions of the 
Free State, but very precisely for the dignity and the interests 
of their own order. Liberty and the law r s are high-sounding 
words. They will often be rendered, on a cool estimate, as 
privilege and vested interests. 

It is not necessary to believe that Caesar planned to establish 
at Rome a 4 Hellenistic Monarchy’, whatever meaning may attach 
to that phrase. The Dictatorship w r as enough. The rule of the 
nobiles , he could see, was an anachronism in a world-empire; and 
so was the power of the Roman plebs when all Italy enjoyed the 
franchise. Caesar in truth was more conservative and Roman 
than many have fancied; and no Roman conceived of govern¬ 
ment save through an oligarchy. But Caesar was being forced 
into an autocratic position. It meant the lasting domination of 
one man instead of the rule of the law, the constitution and the 
Senate; it announced the triumph soon or late of new r forces and 
new ideas, the elevation of the army and the provinces, the 
depression of the traditional governing class. Caesar’s autocracy 
appeared to be much more than a temporary expedient to liquidate 
the heritage of the Civil War and reinvigorate the organs of the 
Roman State. It was going to last—and the Roman aristocracy 
was not to be permitted to govern and exploit the Empire in its 
own fashion. The tragedies of history do not arise from the 
conflict of conventional right and wrong. They are more august 
and more complex. Caesar and Brutus each had right on his side. 

The new party of the Liberators was not homogeneous in 
origin or in motive. The resentment of pardoned Pompeians, 
thwarted ambition, personal feuds and personal interest masked 
by the profession of high principle, family tradition and the 
primacy of civic over private virtue, all these were in the game. 
Yet in the forefront of this varied company stood trusted officers 
of the Dictator, the generals of the Gallic and Civil Wars, 
rewarded already for service or designated to high office. 2 Their 
coalition with Pompeians and Republicans calls for explanation. 

1 On L. Junius Brutus, hardly genuine, cf. below, p. 85. 

2 Below, p. 95. 



60 CAESAR THE DICTATOR 

Without a party a statesman is nothing. He sometimes forgets 
that awkward fact. If the leader or principal agent of a faction goes 
beyond the wishes of his allies and emancipates himself from 
control, he may have to be dropped or suppressed. The reformer 
Ti. Gracchus was put up by a small group of influential consulars. 1 
These prudent men soon refused further support to the rash, 
self-righteous tribune when he plunged into illegal courses. The 
political dynast Crassus used Catilina as his agent. Catilina could 
not, or would not, understand that reform or revolution had no 
place in the designs of his employer. Crassus drew back, and 
Catilina went on, to his ruin. 

When Caesar took the Dictatorship for life and the sworn 
allegiance of senators, it seemed clear that he had escaped from 
the shackles of party to supreme and personal rule. For this 
reason, certain of the most prominent of his adherents combined 
with Republicans and Pompeians to remove their leader. The 
Caesarian party thus split by the assassination of the Dictator 
none the less surv ived, joined for a few months with Republicans 
in a new and precarious front of security and vested interests 
led by the Dictator’s political deputy until a new leader, emerging 
unexpected, at first tore it in pieces again, but ultimately, after 
conquering the last of his rivals, converted the old Caesarian 
party into a national government in a transformed State. The 
composition and vicissitudes of that party, though less dramatic 
in unity of theme than the careers and exploits of the successive 
leaders, will yet help to recall the ineffable complexities of 
authentic history. 

1 Namely Ap. Claudius Fulcher and the two brothers P. Mucius Scaevola and 
P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus (Cicero, Dc re public a i, 31). Pulcher and Crassus 
were the fathers-in-law of Ti. and C. Gracchus respectively. On this faction 
(hostile to the Scipiones), cf. above all Munzer, RA , 257 ff. 



V. THE CAESARIAN PARTY 


C AESAR, who took his stand on honour and prestige, asser¬ 
ted that Pompeius was disloyal. Caesar had made enemies 
through Pompeius—and now Pompeius had joined them. 1 A 
just complaint, but not integral truth: a Sullan partisan before 
turning popularis , Pompeius by his latest change of front came 
back to earlier alliances. 

Sulla restored the oligarchic rule of the nobiles. Thirty 
years later they clustered around Pompeius, from interest, 
from ambition, or for the Republic. The coalition party was 
the head and front of the nobilitas , paramount in public dignity, 
but by no means invulnerable to scrutiny of morals and merit— 
Scipio, vain and corrupt, the venal Lentulus Crus, the Marcelli, 
brave only in word and gesture, Ap. Claudius and Ahenobarbus, 
diverse in character but equally a joy and comfort to their 
enemies. 

Certain of the principes by providential death had been spared 
the experience of another civil war after a brief respite of pre¬ 
carious peace. 2 In all, twenty-six men of consular standing were 
alive in the year of Pharsalus. The Pompeians deducted, fourteen 
remain: no match, however, in eminence. Few of them were of 
any use to Caesar or to the State. During the previous three years 
Caesar had not been able to influence the consular elections to 
much effect. 1 Deplorable in appearance, the lack of consulars, 
while precluding the personal rivalries that disturbed the camp 
and counsels of Pompeius, 4 and strengthening Caesar’s hands for 
action, gave his rule as party-leader a personal and monarchic 
character. Three of the consulars, condemned in the law courts, 

1 BC i, 4, 4: ‘ipse Pompeius ab inimicis Caesaris incitatus et quod neminem 
dignitate secum exaequari volebat, totum se ab eius amicitia averterat et cum com- 
munibus inimicis in gratiam redierat, quorum ipse maximam partem illo adfinitatis 
tempore iniunxerat Caesari.’ Compare also, in his letter to Oppius and Balbus {Ad 
Att. 9, 7 c, 2), the reference ‘iis qui et illi et mihi semper fuerunt inimicissimi, 
quorum artificiis effcctum cst ut res publica in hunc statum perveniret.’ 

2 Velleius 2, 48, 6, mentioning Catulus, the two Luculli, Mctellus (Crcticus) 
and Ilortensius. On Hortcnsius’ death, ct. csp. Cicero, Brutus 6 f. The venerable 
M. Perpema {cos. 92, censor 86) died in the spring of 49 (Dio 41, 14, 5), at the age 
of ninety-eight, so it was alleged (Pliny, NH 7, 156). 

3 Above, p. 41. 

4 Caesar, BC 3, 83 (especially the competition for Caesar’s office of pontifex 
maximus between Scipio, Lentulus Spinther and Ahenobarbus). 





62 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

were debarred from public life until restored by the Dictator. 1 
Two of the three, Gabinius and Messalla, received military com¬ 
mands in the Civil War. Among the other eleven consulars only 
one was an active partisan, commanding armies, namely Cn. 
Domitius Calvinus, and he was no better than his colleague 
Messalla or his illustrious predecessors, for all four had been 
involved in flagrant electoral scandals. 2 

For the rest, elderly survivors, nonentities, neutrals or rene¬ 
gades. A few names stand out, through merit or accident, from 
a dreary background. Neutrality was repugnant to a noble and 
a man of spirit: but kinship might be invoked in excuse. Hence 
one of the Marcelli, the consul who had placed a sword in the 
hand of Pompeius, mindful at last of a marriage-connexion with 
the family of Caesar, abated his ardour, deserted his cousins and 
remained in Italy, scorned by the Pompeians; likewise L. Marcius 
Philippus, the prudent son of a father who had passed unscathed 
through the faction-wars of Marius and Sulla. 3 A consular who 
could stand neutral without the imputation of lack of courage or 
principle was Caesar’s father-in-law, the virtuous L. Calpurnius 
Piso. When hostilities were imminent, Piso offered to mediate 
between Caesar and Pompeius; and during the Civil Wars he 
did not abate his sincere efforts in the cause of concord. 

So much for the principes : before long, most of the Pompeian 
consulars were dead, and few, indeed, of the Caesarians or 
neutrals deserve remark in warfare or politics ever after. As 
Caesar’s enemies were the party in power, being the most active 
and influential of the consulars, youth and ambition in the lower 
ranks of the Senate turned with alacrity to a politician whose 
boast and reputation it was that he never let down his friends. 
Where Pompeius lost supporters through inertia, vanity or 
perfidy, Caesar gained them and held them. The gold of Gaul 
poured in steady streams to Rome, purchasing consuls and tri¬ 
bunes, paying the debts of needy senators and winning the 
support of daring agents. 

There was no scope for talent or ideas on the other side. The 
newer movements in literature were sponsored by a brilliant circle 
of orators and poets, young men hostile to whatever party was in 

1 C. Antonius (cos. 63), A. Gabinius (58) and M. Valerius Messalla Rufus (53). 
Gabinius perished in Illyricum in 47 b.c. 

2 The consuls of 54, the Optimates Ahenobarbus and Ap. Pulcher, had arranged 
one transaction (Ad Att. 4, 15, 7). 

3 On these men, C. Marcellus (cos. 50) and Philippus (cos. 56), related through 
marriage to Caesar’s grand-nephew, see below, p. 128. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 63 

power and noted for their attacks upon Caesar, when Caesar was 
an ally and agent of the dynast Pompeius. They now turned 
against the oligarchs. Catullus and Calvus were dead: their friends 
and companions became Caesarians . 1 He won over many former 
opponents, sons of the nobiles or of Roman knights, and not for 
the worst of reasons. A huge bribe decided C. Scribonius Curio, 
so history records and repeats- -but that was not the only incentive, 
for Clodius’ widow, Fulvia, was his wife, Antonius his friend, Ap. 
Fulcher his enemy . 2 Caelius, the fashionable and extravagant son 
of a parsimonious banker, came over from a calculation of success, 
by reason of his debts—-and perhaps from sincere aspirations to 
reform: as aedile Caelius detected and repressed frauds in the 
waterworks at Rome, composing a memoir that became a classic in 
the administration of the Empire . 3 Like Curio his friend, Caelius 
had contracted a feud with Ap. Pulcher . 4 Both were spirited and 
eloquent, especially Curio, who had already, despite his youth, 
won rank by vigour and acerbity among the greatest of political 
orators . 5 

Caesar’s generosity, revealed in corruption and patronage, knew 
no limits at all. The most varied motives, ideals and loyalties 
combined in his party. Some played for gain and a place on the 
winning side—for discerning judges like Caelius assessed the true 
relation between Pompeius’ prestige and Caesar’s war-trained 
legions . 6 Others sought protection from their enemies, revenge 
or reinstatement. Along with bankrupts and adventurers, the 
Caesarian party comprised a formidable array of ability and social 
distinction. Some senators turn up on Caesar’s side, holding com¬ 
mands in the Civil Wars, without any strong political ties to explain 


1 For exampie, the young Q. Comificius (Catullus 38), of a senatorial family: 
he married a step-daughter of Catilina (Ad jam. 8, 7, 2). On his career, P-W iv, 
1624 ff. Q- Hortensius Hortalus (Catullus 65, 2), the son of the orator, joined 
Caesar (Ad Att. 10, 4, 6). It will hardly be necessary to quote the evidence for 
Catullus’ attacks upon Caesar, Vatinius, Mamurra and Labienus—the last may 
be the ‘Mentula’ of certain poems; cf. T. Frank, AjfP XL (1919), 407 f. Among 
literary men of equestrian rank on Caesar’s side, note C. Asinius Pollio (Catullus 
12, 6 ff.) and L. Ticida, the lover of a Metella (Apuleius, Apol. 10), mercilessly 
put to death by Q. Metellus Scipio in Africa (Bell. Afr. 46, 3). 

2 For a reasoned judgement, cf. Miinzer, P-W n a, 870. 

3 Frontinus, De aq. 76. 

4 And with Ahenobarbus (Ad jam. 8, 14, 1). His feud with Ap. Pulcher and 
his friendship with Curio determined his allegiance—‘C. Curio, quoius amicitia me 
paulatim in hanc perditam causam imposuit’ (Ad jam. 8, 17, 1). 

5 On Curio as an orator, Cicero, Brutus 280 f.; on Caelius, Tacitus, Dial. 
25, 3. &c. 

6 Ad jam. 8, 14, 3. 



64 TIIE CAESARIAN PARTY 

their allegiance . 1 Not only senators chose Caesar, but young 
nobiles at that, kinsmen of the consulars who supported Pompeius 
and of Cato’s partisans . 2 

Civil war might cut across families: as this was a contest 
neither of principle nor of class, the presence of members of 
the same noble house on opposing sides will be explained not 
always by domestic discord and youth’s intolerance of age, but 
sometimes by deliberate choice, to safeguard the wealth and 
standing of the family, whatever the event. 

The bond of personal allegiance may be compared to that 
of the family. It was often stronger. Whatever their class in 
society, men went with a leader or a friend, though the cause 
were indifferent or even distasteful. Of Caesar’s own relatives 
by blood or marriage, certain were neutral . 3 The young Marcus 
Antonius, however, was the son of a Julia. Marriage secured the 
inactivity of the consulars Philippus and C. Marcellus; and the 
son of Philippus joined the Caesarian tribunes . 4 Old associations 
that might have appeared negligible or tenuous were faithfully 
recorded and honoured, for example, by the sons of the pro- 
consuls with whom Caesar had served as military tribune and 
as quaestor . 5 Caesar had kept faith with Crassus; the younger 
son was dead, the elder followed Caesar, for all that his wife was 
a Caecilia Metella . 6 

1 For example, L. Nonius Asprenas (Bell. Afr. 80, 4). Q. Marcius Crispus (ib. 
77, 2) had been a legate of L. Piso in Macedonia (In Pisonem 54). As for A. Allienus 
and Sex. Peducaeus, attested in 48 b.c (Appian, BC 2, 48, 197), the former had 
been a legate of Q. Cicero in Asia (Ad Q. fratrem 1,1, 10), the latter belonged to 
a family on friendly terms with M. Cicero, cf. P-W xrx, 45 ff. 

2 For example, a son of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus (Caesar, BC 3, 
62, 4) and M. Claudius Marcellus Aescrninus (Bell. Al. 57, 4). Also young Hor- 
tensius (Ad Att. 10, 4, 6) and Lucius and Quintus, brother and cousin of C. Cassius 
Longinus, the brother-in-law of Brutus. D. Junius Brutus Albinus, a distant 
relation, had been a legate of Caesar in Gaul. For his pedigree, showing connexions 
with the Postumii, with Ser. Sulpicius Rufus and C. Claudius C. f. Marcellus, see 
Munzer, RA, 407; P-W, Supp. v, 369 ff. 

3 L. Julius Caesar (cos. 64) was a legate (BC 1, 8, 2), but his son fought for the 
Republic in Africa and was killed there. Another young kinsman, Sex. Julius Caesar 
(quaestor in 47), is attested with Caesar in 49 (BC 2, 20, 7). On Q. Pedius, cf. below, 
p. 128. For the stemma of the Julii, P-W x, 183 f. L. Aurelius Cotta (cos. 65) was 
still alive (cf. Suetonius, Divus Julius 79, 4) but not very conspicuous in public. 

4 Caesar, BC 1, 6, 4. 

5 Caesar served under P. Servilius Vatia in Cilicia (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 3) 
and under C. Antistius Vetus in Spain (Velleius 2,43,4). On Servilius’ son (cos. 48), 
cf. below, p. 69 and p. 136. The younger C. Antistius Vetus (cos. suff. 30) was in 
charge of Syria in 45 (Dio 47, 27, 2). 

6 With Caesar in Gaul from 54 onwards, M. Licinius Crassus was made governor 
of the Cisalpina in 49 (Appian, BC 2, 41, 165). He died soon after. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 65 

Though astute and elusive, Caesar yet seemed as consistent 
in his politics as in his friendships. His earliest ties were not 
forgotten; and his ascension revived the party of Marius and 
the battle-cries of the last civil war, only thirty years before. 
The memory of Sulla was loathed even by those who stood 
by the order he had established. Pompeius* repute was evil 
enough with his own class; when he formed an alliance with the 
Metelli he placed deadly weapons in the hand of his rival, 
namely the appeal to the People against oligarchy, oppression 
and murder: 

cum ducc Sullano gerimus civilia bella. 1 

For revenge and as an example to deter posterity from raising 
dissension at Rome, Sulla outlawed his adversaries, confiscated 
their property and deprived their descendants of all political 
rights. Caesar, advocating clemency from humanity and class¬ 
feeling as well as for political effect, secured the restitution 
of Norbanus, Cinna and Carrinas, all names of historic note in 
the Marian faction . 2 Hostile to the oligarchy and wishing to 
supersede it, Marius’ party comprised diverse elements, noble 
and patrician as well as new men, knights and municipal aristo¬ 
crats . 3 Certain distinguished families of that party had not been 
proscribed; and some rallied soon or late to the Sullan system 
and the cause of Pompeius. But not all were now Pompeians— 
P. Sulpicius Rufus, a kinsman, it may be presumed, of that elo¬ 
quent and high-minded tribune whose legislation precipitated the 
Civil War between Marius and Sulla, is appropriately discovered 
on the side of Caesar . 4 

The Marian tradition in politics was carried on by men 
called populates . Pompeius had once been a popularis , using 
tribunes and the advocacy of reform for his personal ambition. 
Like his father before him, Pompeius could not be described 
as a consistent party politician, for good or for evil. Caesar the 
proconsul was faithful to the cause. In his company emerge 
ex-tribunes noted for past legislation or for opposition to the 
Senate, a steady source of recruitment to the ranks of his legates 

1 Lucan, Pharsalia 7, 307. 

2 C. Norbanus Flaccus, grandson of the consul of 83 B.c., L. Cornelius Cinna 
( pr . 44), to whose sister Caesar had once been married, and C. Carrinas, son of the 
Marian general. On Norbanus, cf. below, p. 200; on Carrinas, p. 90. 

3 For nobiles of the Marian faction, above, p. 19. 

4 He was married to a Julia (Val. Max. 6, 7, 3). This P. Sulpicius Rufus, legate 
of Caesar in the Gallic and Civil Wars (P-W iva, 849 f.), became censor in 42 B.c. 
along with the consular C. Antonius (ILS 6204). 



66 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

in Gaul. The active tribune was a marked man. Some of these 
pestilential citizens had succumbed to prosecution, but the 
eloquent Q. Fufius Calenus and the robust and cheerful P. 
Vatinius, a popular figure, tribune in Caesar’s consulate, managed 
to hold their own. 1 

Catilina and Clodius were dead but remembered. Rapacious 
or idealistic enemies of the dominant oligarchy took heart again. 
It was evident that Caesar would restore and reward his friends 
and partisans, old allies in intrigue and illegal activities—or, more 
simply, the victims of political justice, whatever their deserts. 
The Catilinarian P. Cornelius Sulla (a relative of the Dictator 
Sulla) had been prosecuted in the courts, but rescued by the able 
defence of an eloquent lawyer to whom he had lent a large sum of 
money. 2 He now stood with Caesar and commanded the right 
wing at Pharsalus, renewing for Caesar the luck of Sulla. 3 The 
third consulate of Pompeius thinned the enemies of ordered 
government, and a purge of the Senate soon produced another 
crop of ‘homines calamitosi’. 

The censorship was a valuable weapon. In 70 B.c. two Pom¬ 
peian censors had cleansed the Senate of undesirables. 4 Twenty 
years later, on the verge of another coup d'etat, Pompeius had 
only one censor on his side, Ap. Claudius, who strove to expel 
Curio from the Senate. His colleague Piso thwarted that move, 
but was unable or unwilling to save the Caesarian C. Sallustius 
Crispus, a young man from the Sabine country who had plunged 
into politics, a tribune conspicuous among the opponents of the 
Optimates under the third consulate of Pompeius. 5 Luxury and 
vice were alleged against Sallustius: the enemies of Ap. Claudius 
could have incriminated the stern censor on that count. 

Further, Caesar brought back the three disgraced consulars, 
not all dubious characters. Gabinius, at least, an old Pompeian 
partisan, author of salutary legislation in defence of provincials, 
had been an admirable governor of Syria, as the clearest of 

1 On Q. Fufius Calenus, tribune in 61 b.c. (when he protected Clodius), praetor in 
59, cf. P-W vi, 204 fF. For a defence of that much-maligned character P. Vatinius 
see L. G. Pocock, A Commentary on Cicero in Vatinium (1926), 29 ff. Of former 
Pompeian tribunes, L. Flavius joined Caesar (Ad Att. io, i, 2) and so did C. 
Messius (Bell. Afr. 33, 2). 

z Gellius 12, 12, 2 ff.; ‘Sallust’, In Cueronem 3. 

3 Caesar, BC 3, 89, 3. Caesar also stole Venus victrix from his adversaries, 
Appian, BC 2, 68, 281. 

4 Cn. Lentulus Clodianus and L. Gellius Poplicola, legates of Pompeius in the 
Pirate War (Appian, Mithr. 95), perhaps earlier in Spain as well. 

5 Dio 40, 63, 4. On his activities in 52 B.c., Asconius 33 — p. 37 Clark, &c. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 67 

testimony, that of his enemies, so convincingly reveals: he had 
delivered over the publicani into the hands of the Syrians and the 
Jews, nations born to servitude. 1 For that enormity Gabinius 
himself was sacrificed to the publicani. Pompeius could surely 
have saved him, had he cared. 2 But Gabinius had served his 
turn now. 

The extended commands of Pompeius in the West and in the 
East furnished scope for political patronage as well as for military 
experience. His numerous legates might have been the nucleus 
of a formidable faction. 3 Some of them he lent to his ally, Caesar 
the proconsul, and some he lost. 4 Caesar profited by the example 
—and by the errors—of his predecessor. He recruited his legates 
of the Gallic Wars (ten in number from 56 b.c. onwards) from the 
company of his relatives, friends and political associates, varying 
widely in social distinction— nobiles , members of reputable sena¬ 
torial families that had not reached the consulate and sons of 
Roman knights: the latter class does not show a conspicuously high 
proportion. 5 Whatever might be their origin or affiliation, the 
generals of the Gallic Wars as a body stood loyally by their pro- 
consul, commanding armies and governing provinces under the 
Dictatorship. 6 Some, it is true, were disappointed or ungrate¬ 
ful: yet of the whole number, at least eight subsequently became 
consuls. Only two of the legates present or past joined the 
enemies of Caesar—Cicero’s brother and the great marshal 
T. Labienus. Honoured and enriched by Caesar, Labienus was 
encouraged to hope for the consulate. 7 Other Pompeians and 
other men from Picenum might be captured by the arts, the gold 

1 Cicero, De prov. cons. 10: ‘iam vero publicanos miseros—me etiam miserum 
illorum ita de me meritorum miseriis ac dolore!—tradidit in servitutem Iudaeis et 
Syris, nationibus natis servituti/ A sad decline from those earlier merits once 
lauded by Cicero (Asconius 63 p. 72 Clark). 

2 Pompeius spoke publicly in favour of his agent and constrained Cicero to 
undertake his defence: with how much sincerity, another question. Pompeius was 
probably desirous of conciliating the financial interests at this time. 

1 For the list, Drumann-Groebe, Gesch. Roms iv 2 , 420 ff.; 486. 

*♦ Among Caesar’s earliest legates in Caul were T. Labienus, Q.Titurius Sabinus, 
whose father served with Pompeius in Spain (Sallust, Hist. 2, 94 m), and Ser. 
Sulpicius Galba, whose parent may plausibly be discovered in the consilium at 
Asculum (ILS 8888). 

5 For a full list, Drumann-Groebe, Gesch. Roms 111 2 , 700 f. 

6 For the provincial governors of that period, E. Letz, Die Ptovinzialverwaltung 
Caesars (Diss. Strassburg, 1912). 

7 BG 8, 52, 1: 'T. Labienum Galliac praefecit togatae, quo maior ei common* 
datio conciliarctur ad consulatus petitionem.’ The history that never happened 
was the consulate of Caesar and Labienus in 48 b.c\, with the auctoritas of 
Pompeius behind them. For this interpretation, cf. JRS xxvm (1938), 113 ff. 



68 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

and the glory of Caesar. Labienus left Caesar, but not from 
political principle—he returned to an old allegiance. 1 

Caesar’s following was dual in composition. The fact that he 
took up arms against the party in power, had been a Marian and 
a popularisy was feared for a time by contemporaries and often 
believed by posterity to be a revolutionary has led to undue 
emphasis on the non-senatorial or even anti-senatorial elements 
in his party and in his policy. The majority of the leading 
consulars was massed against him. No matter—Caesar’s faction 
numbered not only many senators but nobiles at that. 

Most conspicuous of all is the group of nobiles of patrician 
stock. Caesar, like Sulla, was a patrician and proud of it. He 
boasted before the people that his house was descended from the 
immortal gods and from the kings of Rome. 2 Patrician and 
plebeian understood each other. The patrician might recall past 
favours conferred upon the Roman plebs: 3 he could also appeal 
to the duties which they owed to birth and station. The plebs 
would not have given preference and votes against Caesar for 
one of themselves or for a mere municipal dignitary. In the 
traditional way of the patricians, Caesar exploited his family 
and the state religion for politics and for domination, winning 
the office of pontifex maximus : the Julii themselves were an old 
sacerdotal family. 4 Sulla and Caesar, both members of patrician 
houses that had passed through a long period of obscurity, strove 
to revive and re-establish their peers. 5 The patriciate was a tena¬ 
cious class; though depressed by poverty, by incapacity to adjust 
themselves to a changing economic system, by active rivals and 
by the rise of dynastic plebeian houses like the Metelli, they re¬ 
membered their ancient glory and strove to recover leadership. 

Some families looked to Pompeius as the heir of Sulla and the 
protector of the oligarchy. More numerous were the decayed 
patricians that pinned their hopes on Caesar, and not in vain. 
In the time of Sulla the Fabii have declined so far that they can¬ 
not show a consul. A Fabius Maximus followed Caesar and 

1 On Labienus’desertion, Dio 41, 4, 4; Cicero, Ad Att. 7, 12, 5, &c. He was 
solicited in 50 u.c., BG 8, 52, 3. 

2 Suetonius, Divus Julius 6 , 1: ‘nam ab Anco Marcio sunt Marcii Reges, quo 
nomine fuit mater; a Venere Iulii, cuius gentis familia est nostra, est ergo in genere 
et sanctitas regum, qui plurimum inter homines pollent, ct caerimonia deorum, 
quorum ipsi in potestate sunt reges.’ 

3 Compare Catilina’s remarks in the Senate, Sallust, BC 31, 7: ‘sibi, patricio 
homini, cuius ipsius atque maiorum pluruma benificia in plebem Romanam essent.’ 

4 ILS 2988 (the worship of Vediovis at Bovillae by the ‘genteiles Iuliei’). 

s Munzer, RA, 356; 358 f.; 424. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 69 

brought back the consulate to his family. 1 Ap. Claudius, the 
most prominent member of the patrician Claudii, and two 
branches of the Cornelii, the Scipiones and the Lentuli, stood 
by the oligarchy. But Caesar claimed, among other patricians, 
the worthy Ti. Claudius Nero, whom Cicero desired for son- 
in-law, and the debauched P. Cornelius Dolabella, a sinister 
and disquieting figure, whom the choice of his wife and daughter 
imposed. 2 

The Aemilii and the Servilii occupy a special rank in the 
political history of Rome, patrician houses which seem to have 
formed an alliance for power with the plebeians when the 
latter were admitted to the consulate. 3 Old ties were revived 
and strengthened in the generation of Caesar by Servilia, who 
worked steadily to restore the dignity and power of her family. 
In her dynastic policy she ruthlessly employed the three daugh¬ 
ters of her second husband, whom she gave in marriage to C. 
Cassius Longinus, to M. Aemilius Lepidus and to P. Servilius 
Isauricus. 4 Lepidus could recall a family feud against Pompeius; 
and his consular brother had been won to Caesar by a large 
bribe. 5 Servilius belonged to a branch of Servilia’s own clan 
which had passed over to the plebeians long ago but had not 
forgotten its patrician origin. P. Servilius was a man of some 
competence: Lepidus had influence but no party, ambition but 
not the will and the power for achievement. Caesar, offering 
the consulate, had captured them both—perhaps with connivance 
and help of his friend and former mistress, the formidable and 
far-sighted Servilia. But Servilia’s ambitious designs were 
seriously impaired by Cato’s adhesion to Pompeius and by the 
outbreak of the Civil War. Her son Brutus followed Virtus and 
Libertas , his uncle Cato and Pompeius his father’s murderer. 

The patricians were loyal to tradition without being fettered A 
by caste or principle. Either monarchy or democracy could be' 
made to serve their ends, to enhance person and family. The 

1 Q. Fabius Maximus, who died in his consulate (45 B.c.). 

2 Cicero would have preferred Nero (Ad Att. 6, 6, 1). On his service under 

Caesar, Bell. Al. 25, 3; Suetonius, Tib. 4, 1. Dolabella prosecuted Ap. Claudius 
Fulcher in 51 (Adfam. 8, 6, 1), so he had little choice when it came to civil war. 
Caesar designated him for the consulate of 44: he cannot then have been only 
twenty-five, as stated by Appian, BC 2, 129, 539. Other Caesarian patricians were 
the consular Messalla Rufus and Ser. Sulpicius Galba. i Miinzer, RA, 12 ff. 

4 lb. 347 ff. Her second husband was D. Junius Silanus (cos. 62). An inscription 
from Cos (L’ann. ip. y 1934, 84) shows that P. Servilius’ wife was a Junia, daughter 
of Decimus. 

5 Appian, BC 2, 26, 102. (Curio was a relative of his, Dio 40, 63, 5.) 



7 o THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

constitution did not matter—they were older than the Roman 
Republic. It was the ambition of the Roman aristocrat to main¬ 
tain his dignitas , pursue gloria and display magnitude anirtii, his 
sacred duty to protect his friends and clients and secure their 
advancement, whatever their station in life. Fides , libertas and 
amicitia were qualities valued by the governing class, by Caesar as 
by Brutus. Caesar was a patrician to the core. ‘He was Caesar and 
he would keep faith.’ 1 As he also observed, ‘If he had called upon 
the services of thugs and brigands in defence of his own dignitas , 
he would have requited them/ 2 No empty words—this trait and 
policy of Caesar was patent to contemporaries. 3 Justice has not 
always been done to the generous and liberal traditions of the 
Roman aristocracy, conspicuous in the Julii and in the Claudii. 
The novus homo at Rome was all too anxiously engaged in forget¬ 
ting his origin, improving his prospects and ingratiating himself 
with the nobility to find time to secure the promotion of deserv¬ 
ing friends to the station he had himself so arduously attained. 

For protection against his enemies Caesar appealed to the 
legions, devoted and invincible--they could tear down the very 
heavens, so he told people at Hispalis, misguided Spaniards. 4 
The centurions were allies and political agents as well as officers. 
At Pharsalus the sturdy Crastinus opened the fray with the 
battle-cry of Caesar’s dignitas and the liberty of the Roman 
People. 5 In his dispatches Caesar duly requited the valour and 
loyalty of the centurions. 6 Pay, booty and the opportunities for 
traffic and preferment made military service remunerative. 
Caesar borrowed funds from his centurions before the crossing 
of the Rubicon. 

Though equestrian officers, whether senators’ sons or not, 
commonly owed their commissions less to merit than to the 
claims of friendship and influence or the hope of procuring gain 
and political advancement, military experience was not confined 
to centurions, their social inferiors—the knight C. Volusenus 
Quadratus served for some ten years continuous under Caesar 

1 Bell. Hisp, 19, 6: ‘se Caesarem esse fidemque praestaturum.’ Compart* also 
a phrase from the speech Pro Bithynis (quoted by Gellius 5, 1 3, 6): ‘netjue clientes 
sine sunima infamia descri possunt.’ 

z Suetonius, Divus Iulius 72: ‘si grassatorum et sicariorum ope in tuenda sua 
dignitate usus csset, talibus quoque se parent gratiarn relaturum/ 

Ad fam. 8, 4, 2: ‘infimorum hominum amicitiam.* 

4 Bell. Hisp. 42, 7: ‘an me deleto non animum advertebatis habere legiones 

populum Romanum quae non solum vobis obsistere sed etiam caelum diruere 
possent?’ 5 BC 3, 91, 2. 

0 For example, BC 3, 53, 4 f. f cf. Cicero, Ad Aft. 14, 10, 2 (Scaeva as a type). 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 71 

in Gaul and in the Civil Wars. 1 There were other representatives 
of his class, excellent men. 

Many knights were to be found in the following of aproconsul, 
in a variety of functions. Such equestrian staff officers were 
Mamurra, an old Pompeian from Formiae, notorious for wealth 
and vice, 2 and the phenomenal P. Ventidius, whose infancy had 
known slavery and degradation : captured by Pompeius Strabo at 
Asculum, he had been led or carried in a Roman triumph. From 
obscure years of early manhood—some said that he served as a 
common soldier—Ventidius rose to be an army contractor and 
attached himself to Caesar the proconsul as an expert manager of 
supplies and transport. 3 

Among Caesar’s friends were his secretaries, counsellors and 
political agents, many of them notable for literary tastes and pro¬ 
duction as well as for aptitude in finance. The secretariat of the 
proconsul developed into the cabinet of the Dictator. Most of 
them were Roman knights: but Pansa, and possibly Hirtius, had 
already entered the Seriate. 4 Hirtius was a comfortable person of 
scholarly tastes, in high repute as a gourmet: it was a danger to ask 
him to dinner. 5 Pansa was also in Gaul for a time. Hirtius was later 
to complete the Bellum (laliicum and to compile the record of the 
Helium Alexandrinum , with the intention of carrying his narrative 
down to the death of Caesar; and he produced less unobtrusive 
works of propaganda for his friend and patron, attacking the 
memory of Cato. History can show no writings of Pansa, or of 
C. Matius, the Caesarian business man, but Matius’ son com¬ 
posed a treatise upon horticulture and domesticated a new species 
of apple that bore his name. 6 

Tireless and inseparable, Oppius and Balbus wrote letters and 
pamphlets, travelled, intrigued and negotiated in Caesar’s in- 

1 BG 3, 5, 2; 4, 21, 1 and 23, 5; 6, 41, 2; 8, 23, 4 and 48, 1; BC 3, 60, 4. 

2 Cicero, Ad Aft. 7, 7, 6; Catullus 29, 1 ft'., &c., cf. P-W xiv, 966 f> 

3 The essential evidence about P. Ventidius is supplied by Gellius 15,4; Dio 43, 
51, 4 f. On the problem of his identification with the muleteer Sabinus in Virgil, 
Catalept. 10, cf. Munzer in P-W I a, i592ff. It is not ically eery plausible. Ventidius 
was perhaps, like Mamurra, a pracfectus fabrum in Caesar’s service. No contem¬ 
porary or official source gives him the ro^iow^i‘Bassus’, which occurs only in Gellius 
(l.c.), Eutropius (7, 5) and Rufius Festus, Brev. 18, 2. Gellius professes to derive 
from Suetonius. 

4 C. Vibius Pansa Caetronianus (for the full name, 1 LS 8890) is said by Dio 
(45, 17, 1) to have belonged to a proscribed family. Yet he is surely the same 
person as C. Vibius Pansa, tribune in 51 b.c. (Ad Jam. 8, 8, 6). A. Hirtius is no¬ 
where mentioned as an army commander in the Gallic campaigns; and some find 
that his style is not very military. 

5 Ad jam. 9, 20, 2. 


6 Pliny, NH 15, 49. 



72 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

terests on secret and open missions before and after the outbreak 
of the Civil War to confirm the political allies of the proconsul, 
to win over influential neutrals, to detach, deceive or intimidate 
his enemies. Through these agents repeated assaults were de¬ 
livered upon the wavering and despondent loyalties of Cicero. 1 

C. Oppius probably belonged to a substantial family of Roman 
bankers. But Oppius lacks colour beside the formidable 
Balbus, the leading personage in the ancient Punic city of 
Cades in Spain. L. Cornelius Balbus was not a citizen by birth— 
he received the franchise for service to Rome in the Sertorian 
War, through the agency of Pompeius. 2 Caesar, quaestor in 
Hispania Ulterior and then propraetor, made the acquaintance of 
Balbus and brought him to Rome. Allied both to Pompeius and 
to Caesar, Balbus gradually edged towards the more powerful 
attraction. In the last decade of the Republic there can have been 
few intrigues conducted and compacts arranged without the 
knowledge—and the mediation—of Balbus. 3 His unpopularity 
is attested by the elaborate excuses of his advocate. At the 
beginning of the year 56 b.c. the alliance of Pompeius, Crassus 
and Caesar threatened to collapse. At this favourable moment 
an unknown agent was instigated to prosecute Balbus, impugning 
his title to the Roman citizenship. The pact of Luca reunited 
the dynasts and saved their agent. When the case came up for 
trial, both Pompeius and Crassus defended the man of Gades. 
Cicero also spoke. Envious detractors there might be—but 
Balbus, the friend of such eminent citizens, could surely have 
no enemies. 4 Balbus won. But for the failure of certain political 
intrigues, the fate of Balbus and the role of Cicero would have 
been very different. 

Balbus ruled his native Gades like a monarch: in Rome the 
alien millionaire exercised a power greater than most Roman 
senators. Certain of the politicians whose methods earned them 
the name of populates were hostile to the financial interests and 
eager, from selfish or disinterested motives, to break the power 
of money in the Roman State. Not so Crassus and Caesar. The 
faction of Pompeius was unable to move either the propertied 

1 Ad Att. 8, 15a; 9, 7a and b, &c. 

~ Pro Balbo, passim. His new gentile name, ‘Cornelius’, he probably derived 
from L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus, above, p. 44, n. 4. 

3 It may be presumed that he had a hand in the pact of 60 B.c. In December 
of that year he sought to bring Cicero into it, Ad Att . 2, 3, 3. 

4 Cicero, Pro Balbo 58: ‘nam huic quidem ipsi quis est umquam inventus 
inimicus aut quis iure esse potuit?’ 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 73 

classes or high finance against Caesar. 1 The financier Atticus will 
have been able to forecast events with some accuracy and face 
the future with equanimity. It is much to be regretted that his 
letters to apprehensive clients have not been preserved. Many 
of the bankers were already personal friends of Caesar: it may be 
presumed that he gave them guarantees against revolution. They 
had more to fear from Pompeius, and they knew it. Caesar’s 
party had no monopoly of the bankrupts and terrorists ; 2 while 
Pompeians and their leader himself, when war broke out, made 
savage threats of Sullan proscriptions. 3 

The prince of all the bankers and financiers, C. Rabirius 
Postumus, was an ardent Caesarian. 4 His father, C. Curtius, 
is designated as a leader of the equestrian order: not only that— 
Curtius was ‘fortissimus et maximus publicanus’, which should 
suffice. Eloquent advocacy proclaims that this person conducted 
financial operations, not for any personal profit, but to acquire the 
means for bounty and benevolence. 5 No details confirm the 
paradox among Roman financiers. More is known about his 
son, a banker whose business had wide ramifications over all the 
world. The disinterested and enlightened Postumus lent large 
sums of money to the King of Egypt, who, unable to repay his 
benefactor in hard cash, did what he could and appointed him 
chief minister of finance in the kingdom. 

Senators and knights, such was the party of Caesar. * With 
the Roman plebs and the legions of Gaul, a group of ancient 
families, young men of eager talent and far-sighted bankers as 
his adherents, Caesar easily won Rome and Italy. But Rome 
had conquered an empire: the fate of Italy was decided in the 
provinces. In earlier days the Roman noble augmented his 
power and influence through attaching the aristocracy of Italy 

1 Ad Att. 7, 7, 5 (Dec. 50): ‘an publicanos qui numquam firmi sed nunc Caesari 
sunt amicissimi, an faeneratores, an agricolas, quibus optatissimum est otium? 
nisi eos timere putas ne sub regno sint qui id numquam, dum modo otiosi essent, 
recusarunt’; cf. Ad Att. 8, 13, 2; 16, 1. 

2 lb. 9, 11, 4; Ad. Jam. 7, 3, 2. 

3 Ad Att. 8, 11, 2; 9, 10, 2 and 6; 11, 6, 2. 

4 Dessau {Hermes xlvi (1911), 613 ff.) has rendered it highly probable that the 
Caesarian Curtius, or Curtius Postumus, is the same person as the notorious 
Rabirius Postumus, so named after testamentary adoption by his maternal uncle, 
the alleged slayer of Saturninus, and a man of substance {Ad Att. 1, 6, 1). 

5 Cicero, Pro C. Rabirio Postumo 3: ‘fuit enim pueris nobis huius pater, C. Cur¬ 
tius, princeps ordinis equestris, fortissimus et maximus publicanus, cuius in 
negotiis gerendis magnitudinem animi non tarn homines probassent, nisi in eodem 
benignitas incredibilis fuisset, ut in augenda re non avaritiae praedam, sed instru- 
mentum bonitati quaerere videretur.’ 



74 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

to his friendship, the poor to his clientela . The practice spread 
to the provinces. Pompeius Magnus surpassed all the proconsuls 
before him. In the West, in Alrica and throughout Asia, towns, 
provinces and kings were bound to the imperator of the Roman 
People by personal ties of allegiance. In the imminence of civil 
war, Rome feared from Caesar’s side an irruption of barbarians 
from beyond the Alps. No less real the menace from Pompeius, 
the tribes of the Balkans, the kings and horsemen of the East. 1 
Pompeius derided Lucullus, naming him The Roman Xerxes’: 2 
he was an Oriental despot himself. 

In the West, in the Gallic provinces at least, the inherited 
and personal preponderance of the dynast passed rapidly to his 
younger and more energetic rival. Caesar the proconsul won to 
his person the towns of Gallia Cisalpina and the iribal princes 
of Gaul beyond the Alps. Excellent men from the colonies and 
municipia of the Cisalpina might be found among the officers 
and friends of Pompeius; 3 and it will not have been forgotten 
that his father had secured Latin rights for the Transpadane 
communities. But Caesar had the advantage of propinquity and 
duration. In Verona the father of the poet Catullus, no doubt 
a person of substance, was the friend and host of the proconsul: 4 
among his officers were knights from the aristocracy of the 
towns. 5 Benefits anticipated were more potent than benefits 
conferred. The Transpadani were eager for the full Roman 
citizenship. Caesar had championed them long ago: as proconsul 
he encouraged their aspirations, but he did not satisfy them until 
^ the Civil War had begun. 

In Gaul beyond the Alps, the provincia (or Narbonensis as it 
was soon to be called), there was a chieftain of the Vocontii 
who had led the cavalry of his tribe for Pompeius against Sertorius, 
receiving as a reward the Roman citizenship; his brother like¬ 
wise served in the w r ar against Mithridates. His son, Pompeius 
Trogus, was the confidential secretary of Caesar. 6 Another 

1 Ad Att. 8, ii, 2; 9, 10, 3; 11,6, 2. In 48 b.c. he was in negotiation with 
Burebistas, the Dacian monarch (SICP 762). 

2 Velleius 2, 33, 4: ‘Xerxes togatus.’ 

J e.g. N. Magius from Cremona (Caesar, BC 1, 24, 4). 

4 Suetonius, Divus Julius 73. The poet may have owed something to the patron¬ 
age of the Metelli. Celer, Clodia’s husband, governed the Cisalpina in 62 B.c. (Ad 
Jam. 5, 1). 

5 e.g. C. Fleginas (or rather, Felginas) from Placentia, Caesar, BC 3, 71, 1. The 
maternal grandfather of L. Calpurnius Piso was a business man called Calventius 
from that colony, Cicero, In Pisonem fr. 11 — Asconius 4 (p. 5, Clark), &c. 

6 Justin 43, 5, 11 f. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 75 

agent of the proconsul was the admirable C. Valerius Troucillus, 
‘homo honestissimus provinciae Galliae’, son of the tribal chief¬ 
tain of the Helvii. 1 Further, the ambitious and poetical Cornelius 
Callus first enters authentic history as a friend of Caesar s partisan 
Pollio. 2 Southern Gaul forgot the ancestral tie with the Domitii 
and saw the recent laurels of Pompeius wane before the power and 
glory of Caesar, the Germans shattered, the Rhine crossed and 
Britain revealed to the world. 

The levies of northern Italy filled the legions of Caesar with 
devoted recruits. 3 His new conquest, Gallia Comata, provided 
wealth and the best cavalry in the world. Caesar bestowed the 
franchise upon the chieftains, his allies or his former adversaries, 
of a frank and generous race. Gaul remained loyal during the 
Civil War. 

Pompeius Magnus counted all Spain in his client ela. Suitably 
adopting a Scipionic policy of exploiting help from Spain to his 
own advantage, Cn. Pompeius Strabo had granted the Roman 
citizenship to a whole regiment of Spanish cavalry, volunteers 
recruited to crush the Italian insurgents: 4 the son reconquered 
Spain from Sertorius and the Marian faction. But Pompeius had 
enemies in Spain, and Caesar both made himself known there 
and in absence conferred benefits upon his old province, as he 
reminded the ungrateful men of HispalisA Gades had been 
loyal to Rome since the great Punic War, and Caesar filched 
the Balbi, the dynasts of Gades, from Pompeius' following to his 
own. He may also have inherited the Spanish connexion of his 
old associate Crassus, who had once raised a private army in the 
Peninsula. 0 

Africa had given the name and occasion to the first triumph 
of the young Pompeius. But in Africa the adventurer P. Sittius, 
who had built up a kingdom for himself, was mindful of old 
Catihnarian memories. Neither the families of Roman veterans 

1 BG 1, 47, 4, cf. 19, 3. For the correct form of the name, cf. 1 '. Rice 
Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul 1 (1911), O52. On the family, cf. also BG 7, 
65, 2. 

z Ad Jam. io, 32, 5, where it is stated that Callus has in his possession a dramatic 
poem written by the younger Balbus. Callus came from Forum Julii (Jerome, 
Chron ., p. 164 h). His father was called Cn. Cornelius (ILS 8995), and may he 
a Gallic notable who got the citizenship from a C'n. Cornelius Lentulus in the 
service of Pompeius during the Sertorian War; cf. the case of Balbus (above, 
p. 72). On this hypothesis, cf. R. Syme, CQ XXXII (1938), 39 ff. 

3 The contingent from Opitergium was justly celebrated, Livy, Per. 110, &c. 

« ILS 8888. 15 Bell . Hisp. 42, 1 If. 

6 Plutarch, Crassus 6. 



76 THE CAESARIAN PARTY 

nor the native tribe of the Gaetuli had forgotten Marius and the 
war against Jugurtha. 1 

In the East kings, dynasts and cities stood loyal to Pompeius 
as representative of Rome, but only so long as his power sub¬ 
sisted. Enemies and rivals were waiting to exploit a change. 
In Egypt Caesar could support a candidate, Cleopatra, against 
her sister and the ministers of the Ptolemaic Court; and an able 
adventurer, Mithridates of Pergamum, raised an army for Caesar 
and relieved the siege of Alexandria; he was also helped by the 
Idumaean Antipater. Mytilene was in the clieniela of Pompeius: 
Theophanes of that city was his friend, domestic historian and 
political agent. 2 But Caesar, too, had his partisans in the cities of 
Hellas, augmented by time and success. 3 Pompeius constantly 
employed freedmen, like the financier Demetrius of Gadara. 4 
Caesar rivalled and surpassed the elder dynast: he placed three 
legions in Egypt under the charge of a certain Rufinus, the son 
of one of his freedmen. 5 

Such in brief was the following of Caesar, summarily indicated 
and characterized by the names of representative members— 
senators, knights and centurions, business men and provincials, 
kings and dynasts. Some fell in the wars, like Gabinius and 
Curio: the survivors expected an accession of wealth, dignity and 
power. Had not Sulla enriched his partisans, from senators 
down to soldiers and freedmen? There were to be no pro¬ 
scriptions. But Caesar acquired the right to sell, grant or divide 
up the estates of his adversaries. Land was seized for his 
veteran colonies, in Italy and abroad. At auction Pompeius* 
property brought in fifty million denarii : it was worth much 
more. 6 Antonius and the poet Q. Cornificius divided Pompeius* 
town-house. 7 Others to profit from the confiscation of villas and 

1 On P. Sittius {Bell. Afr. 25, 2, &c.), cf. P-W 111 a, 409 ff.; on the Gaetuli, Bell. 
Afr. 56, 3. The clieniela of the Pompeii, however, was very strong, cf. Cato’s words 
to Pompeius’ son, ib. 22, 4 f. 

1 SICA 75 1 ff. As for Theophanes, Cicero speaks of his auctoritas with Pompeius 
{Ad. Alt. 5, 11, 3); cf. also Caesar, BC 3, 18, 3 (Libo, Lucceius and Theophanes). 
Of his influence and his intrigues there is abundant evidence, cf. P-W v a, 2090 ff. 

3 For example, in Thessaly ( BC 3, 34, 4; 35, 2 ; Cicero, Phil. 13, 33). Note also 
men of Cnidus {SIC 2 761 ; Strabo, p. 656, &c.). On these people cf. further 
below, p. 262 f. 

4 P-W iv, 2802 f. On his wealth, power and ostentation, cf. Plutarch, Pompeius 
40; Josephus, BJ 1, 155; Seneca, De tranquillitute animi 8, 6: ‘quern non puduit 
locupletiorem esse Pompeio.’ 

5 Suetonius, Divus lulius 76, 3. Possibly ‘Rufio’, not ‘Rufinus’, cf. Miinzer in 

P-W 1 a, 1198. 

0 At least seventy millions (Dio 48, 36, 4 f.). 


7 Plutarch, Caesar 51. 



THE CAESARIAN PARTY 77 

estates were characters as diverse as Servilia and P. Sulla 1 —who 
had acquired an evil name for his acquisitions thirty years before. 
Balbus was notorious already, envied and hated for his princely 
pleasure-gardens in Rome, his villa at Tusculum. The Dictator¬ 
ship found him building, a sign of opulence and display. 2 

Senators who had been adherents of the proconsul, distin¬ 
guished neutrals, astute renegades or reconciled Pompeians were 
rapidly advanced to magistracies without regard for constitu¬ 
tional bar or provision. From six hundred Caesar raised the 
Senate to nine hundred members, 3 and he increased the total of 
quaestors to forty, of praetors to sixteen. 4 Along with the sons 
of the proscribed and the victims of Roman political justice, 
partisans of all categories secured admission to the Senate by 
standing for quaestorship or tribunate or by direct adlection 
through the special powers of the Dictator. Hence a reinforce¬ 
ment and transformation of the governing body and the hierarchy 
of administration. Many of Caesar’s measures were provisional 
in purpose, transient in effect. This was permanent. 

1 Ad Alt. 14, 21, 3; Ad jam . 15, 19, 3; De off. 2, 29. 

“ Ad Att. 12, 2, 2: ‘at Balbus aedificat. tl yap avrw /xeAet;’ 

1 Dio 43, 47, 3. The total may not really have been quite so large. 

4 lb. 43, 49, 1. Caesar clearly contemplated a system of two consular and 
sixteen praetorian provinces, cf. Mommsen, Gcs. Schr. iv, 169 ft. 



VI. CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 


W HEN a party seizes control of the Commonwealth it 
cannot take from the vanquished the bitter and barren 
consolation of defaming the members of the new government. 
The most intemperate allegations thrown about by malignant 
contemporaries are repeated by credulous posterity and con¬ 
secrated among the uncontested memorials of history. Sulla, 
they said, put common soldiers into the Senate: but the for¬ 
midable company of the Sullan centurions shrinks upon scrutiny 
to a single example. 1 

Caesar’s adherents were a ghastly and disgusting rabble: 
among the new senators were to be found centurions and soldiers, 
scribes and sons of freedmen. 2 These categories are neither 
alarming nor novel. In theory, every free-born citizen was 
eligible to stand for the quaestorship: in fact, the wealth and 
standing of a knight was requisite—no exorbitant condition. 
Sons of freedmen had sat in the Senate before now, furtive and 
insecure, under the menace of expulsion by implacable censors; 
the scribe likewise might well be in possession of the census of 
a Roman knight. Caesar’s centurions were notorious for their 
loyalty, and for the rewards of loyalty. The Senate was full of 
them, it was alleged. Only ignorance or temerity will pretend 
that the Dictator promoted partisans from the ranks of the 
legions, with no interval of time or status. An ex-centurion 
could be a knight, and therefore juryman, officer or man of 
affairs, the progenitor, when he was not the heir, of a family 
with municipal repute and standing at least—not all centurions 
were rustic and humble in origin. The centurionatc was worth 
having: it could be got through patronage as well as service. 3 

1 The notorious L. Fufidius, ‘honorum omnium dehonestamentum’ (Sallust, 
Hist, i, 55, 22 m): a prirnipiiaris (C)rosius 5, 21, 3). But there may have been 
others. On the class from which Sulla’s new senators were drawn, cf. H. Hill, 
CQ xxvi (1932), 170 if. 

2 In general, a ‘colluvies* (Ad Att. 9, 10, 7), a vexvia (ib. 9, 18, 2). The principal 
pieces of evidence are: Dio 42, 51,5; 43, 20, 2; 27, 1; 47, 3; 48, 22, 3; Suetonius, 
Lhvus Iulius 76, 3 and 80, 2; Cicero, Ad Jam. 6, 18, 1; De div. 2, 23 ; De off. 2, 29; 
Phil. 11, 12; 13, 27; Seneca, Controv. 7, 3, 9; Macrobius 2, 3, 11. For a fuller dis¬ 
cussion, see R. Synie, BSR Papers xiv (1938), 12 If. 

' Bell. Afr. 54, 5 and, by implication, BC 1,46, 4. On the whole question of the 
social standing of centurions at this time, cf. the evidence and arguments adduced 
'mJRS xxvii (1937), 128 f. and BSR Papers xiv (1938), 13. 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 79 

Some of Caesar's equestrian officers may have been ex-centurions. 
Of the senators stated once to have served in the ranks as cen¬ 
turions only one is sufficiently attested. 1 

Worse than all that, Caesar elevated men from the provinces 
to a seat in the Senate of Rome. Urban humour blossomed 
into scurrilous verses aoout Gauls newly emancipated from the 
national trouser, unfamiliar with the language and the topography 
of the imperial city. 2 The joke is good, if left as such. 

Gallia Cisalpina still bore the name and status of a province. 
The colonies and municipia of this region, virile, prosperous and 
reputed, might with truth be extolled as the flower of Italy, the 
pride and bulwark of the Roman State. 3 That would not avail to 
guard these new Italians, whether belonging to ancient founda¬ 
tions of the Republic or to tribal capitals in the Transpadana 
recently elevated in rank, from the contemptuous appellation 
of‘Gaul’. Catullus’ family would perhaps have been eligible for 
senatorial rank, if not Virgil’s as well. Among Caesar’s nominees 
may be reckoned the Hostilii from Cremona and the poet Ilelvius 
Cinna, tribune of the plebs in 44 B.c. 4 

Gallia Narbonensis can assert a peculiar and proper claim 
to be the home of trousered senators. No names are recorded. 
Yet surmise about origins and social standing may claim validity. 
The province could boast opulent and cultivated natives of 
dynastic families, Hellenized before they became Roman, whose 
citizenship, so far from being the recent gift of Caesar, went 
back to proconsuls a generation or two earlier. Caesar’s friends 
Trouciilus, Trogus and Callus were not the only members of 
this class, which, lacking full documentation, is sometimes dis¬ 
regarded before it emerges into imperial history with two con¬ 
suls in the reign of Caligula. 5 There were immigrant Roman 

1 C. Fuficius Fango (Dio 48, 22, 3; Cicero, Ad Att. 14, 10, 2). A man of this 
name was a municipal magistrate at Acerrae (CIL x, 3758). L. Decidius Saxa may 
also have been an ex-centurion, below, p. 80, n. i ; also the Etruscan Cafo, JRS 
xxvu (1937), 135, though it is not certain that he was a senator. 

2 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 80, 2: 

Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit, idem in curiam. 

Galli bracas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt. 

3 Cicero, Phil. 3, 13: ‘est enim iile flos ltaliae, illud firmamentum imperi populi 
Romani, illud ornamentum dignitatis.’ 

4 Three brothers, L., C. and P. Hostilius Sasema, can be distinguished, of 
whom the first at least was a senator (Miinzer, P-W viii, 2512 ff.). If the scholiast 
Porphyrio (on Horace, Sat. 1,3, 130) could be trusted, P. Alfenus Varus (cos. suff, 
39) came from Cremona. As for Helvius Cinna, cf. fr. 1 of his poems; for Helvii at 
Brixia, CIL v, 4237; 4425 f. ; 4612; 4877. 

5 Cn. Domitius Afer (cos. suff. A.n. 39) and D. Valerius Asiaticus (coj. 11 a.d. 46). 



8 o CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

citizens as well. Th e provincia, which received a Roman colony 
at Narbo as early as 118 b.c., before all Italy became Roman, 
was also subjected to casual settlement of Italians and intensive 
exploitation by traders and financiers. 

The colonial and Italian element is more conspicuous in 
Spain, which had been a Roman province for a century and a half. 
The Peninsula contained several colonies officially constituted, 
irregular settlements of immigrants and a large number of citizens 
by this date. L. Decidius Saxa, made tribune of the plebs by Caesar 
in 44 B.c., had served under him in the wars, either as a centurion 
or as an equestrian officer. 1 Saxa may be described as an im¬ 
migrant or colonial Roman. Balbus, the Gaditane magnate, was 
not a Roman by birth, but a citizen of an alien community allied 
to Rome. Balbus did not yet enter the Senate. His young nephew, 
courageous and proud, cruel and luxurious, became quaestor in 
44 b.c. 2 

Of Caesar’s partisans, equestrian or new senators, from the 
provinces of the West, some were of Italian, others of native 
extraction. The antithesis is incomplete and of no legal validity. 
At the very least, colonial Romans or other wealthy and talented 
individuals from the towns of Spain and southern Gaul will 
have been more acceptable to the Roman aristocracy than the 
sons of freed slaves, less raw and alien perhaps than some of the 
intruders who derived from remote and backward parts of Italy 
their harsh accents and hideous nomenclature. 

Provincials, freedmen or centurions, their proportion must 
have been tiny in an assembly that now numbered about nine 
hundred members. The incautious acceptance of partisan 
opinions about the origin and social status of Caesar’s nominees 
not only leads to misconceptions about the Dictator’s policy, 
domestic and imperial, but renders it hard to understand the 
composition and character of the Senate before his Dictator- 


The gentilicia derive from proconsuls. For Domitii in Narbonensis, cf. above, 
p. 44; for Valerii note C. Valerius Troucillus, Caesar, BG i, 47,4, &c. 

1 Caesar, BC i, 66, 3; Cicero, Phil. 11, 12; 13, 27, &c., discussed in JRS xxvn 
( I 937), i^7 ff. The gentilicium is Oscan. Is he perhaps of the family of the pro¬ 
scribed Samnite, Cn. Decidius, whom Caesar defended (Tacitus, Dial. 21,6, cf. Pro 
Cluentio 161)? 

2 For his services to Caesar, Velleius 2, 51, 3. Balbus was quaestor in Hispania 
Ulterior under Pollio, who reports, among other enormities, that he had a Roman 
citizen burned alive and an auctioneer from Hispalis thrown to wild beasts ( Adfam. 
10, 32, 3). Another senator from Spain may be Titius, Bell. Afr. 28, 2, cf. Miinzer, 
P-W vi A, 1557. For the possibility that there were one or two provincial senators 
even before Caesar, cf. BSR Papers xiv (1938), 14. 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 81 

ship and after. From sheer reason afid weight of numbers, from 
the obscure or fantastic names by chance recorded once and 
never again, to say nothing of more than two hundred unknown 
to history, the Senate after Sulla must have contained in high 
proportion the sons of Roman knights. 1 The same arguments 
hold for Caesar's Senate, with added force, and render it at the 
same time more difficult—and less important—to discover pre¬ 
cisely which worthy nonentities owed admission to the Dictator. 
Between senator and knight the cleavage was of rank only. The 
greater part of the socially undesirable or morally reprehensible 
nominees of Caesar the Dictator were in truth highly respectable 
Roman knights, men of property and substance, never too warmly 
to be commended as champions of the established order. No 
mere concordia ordinum , with senators and knights keeping to their 
allotted functions—a new government of national concentration 
had been established. 

Cicero shuddered to think that he would have to sit in the 
Senate in the sight and presence of the rehabilitated Gabinius. 2 
That assembly now harboured many other clients whom Cicero 
had once defended, not, as Gabinius, under pressure from the 
masters of Rome, but from choice, from gratitude or for profit. 
The patrician P. Sulla was joined by the nobilis C. Antonius and 
the obscure M. Cispius, a man of character and principle who 
had been condemned on a charge of corruption. 3 Cicero should 
have sought consolation: he could now see beside him a great 
company of bankers and financiers, the cream and pride of the 
equestrian order, old friends, loyal associates or grateful clients. 
Balbus, Oppius and Matius had not entered the Senate—they 
did not need to, being more useful elsewhere. But L. Aelius 
Lamia, a knight of paramount station and dignity, once a devoted 
adherent of Cicero, for activities in whose cause he had been 

1 W. Schur, Bonner Jahrbiicher cxxxiv (1929), 54 ff.; R. Syme, BSR Papers xiv 
( r 938), 4 ff.; 23 f. To support this view one need not appeal merely to general 
statements like ‘cetera multitudo insiticia’ (‘Sallust’, Ad Caesarem 2, 11, 3) or ‘iam 
ex tota Italia delecti’ (Cicero, Pro Sulla 24). There are plenty of odd but signifi¬ 
cant examples of the ‘homo novus parvusque senator’ {Bell. Afr. 57, 4). Note the 
brothers Caepasii, ‘ignoti homines et repentini ’, small-town orators who became 
quaestors (Cicero, Brutus 242), C. Billienus, ‘homo per se magnus’, who was nearly 
elected consul c. 105-100 (ib. 175), L. Turius likewise in 65 (ib. 237, cf. Ad Att. 1, 

1,2) and T. Aufidius, once a publicanus, but rising to be governor of Asia (Val. Max. 
6, 9, 7; Cicero, Pro Flacco 45). 

2 Ad Att . 10, 8, 3. 

1 M. Cispius, tribune in 57, ‘vir optimus et constantissimus’ {Pro Sestio 76), 
condemned soon after {Pro Plancio 75), despite Cicero’s defence, later became 
praetor, C 1 L i\ 819. 



82 CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

relegated by the consul Gabinius, and the great Rabirius, who 
inherited the generous virtues and unimpaired fortune of his 
parent—these admirable men and others now adorned the Senate 
of Rome, augmented in personal standing to match their wealth. 1 
As tax-farmers, public contractors, princes of industry and com¬ 
merce, as equestrian officers in the army superintending supply 
or commanding regiments of cavalry, they had acquired varied 
and valuable experience, now to be employed when they governed 
provinces and led armies of Roman legions. Rabirius did not 
merely declaim about fleets and armies, vexing Cicero: he com¬ 
manded them. 2 

Above all, Caesar recruited for his new Senate the propertied 
classes of the Italian towns, men of station and substance, whether 
their gains were derived from banking, industry or farming, 
pursuits in no way exclusive. Rome outshines the cities of Italy, 
suppressing their history. Yet these were individual communi¬ 
ties, either colonies of old or states till recently independent, 
endowed with wide territories, a venerable history and proud 
traditions. The extension neither of the Roman citizenship nor 
of municipal institutions over the peninsula could transform 
their internal economy. As at Rome under a P.epublican constitu¬ 
tion, so in the municipia, the aristocracy retained in civic and 
urban garb the predominance they had enjoyed in a feudal or 
tribal order of society. Office conferred nobility; and the friend¬ 
ship and influence of the municipal aristocrat was largely solicited 
by Roman politicians. Not only could he sway the policy of his 
city or influence a whole region of Italy 3 —he might be able, 
like the Roman noble, to levy a private army from tenants and 
dependents. 4 

Many cities of Italy traced an origin earlier than that of Rome: 
their rulers could vie in antiquity, and even in dignity and repute, 

1 L. Aelius Lamia, ‘cquestris ordinis princeps’ (A d jam. it, 16, 2), ‘vir prae- 
stantissimus et ornatissimus* (In Pisoncjn 64), was aedile in 45 (Ad Att. 13, 45, 1). 
He had business interests in Africa (Adfam. 12, 29) and probably large estates there 
—the later saltus Lamianus ? 

2 Ad Att . 9, 2a, 3 : ‘Postumus Curtius venit nihil nisi classes loquens et exer- 
citus.’ Rabirius even hoped for the consulate (Ad Att. 12, 49, 2). For his service 
in taking troops to Africa, Bell. Afr. 3 , 1; 26, 3. 

3 e.g., A. Caccina of Volaterrae, ‘hominem in parte Italiae minime contemnenda 
facile omnium nobilissimum* (Ad fam. 6 , 6 , 9); A. Cluentius Habitus, ‘homo non 
solum municipi Larinatis ex quo erat sed etiam regionis illius et vicinitatis virtute, 
existimatione, nobilitate princeps* (Pro Cluentio ri). On the class of domi nobiles , 
cf. Pro Cluentio 23 ; 109; 196; Sallust, BC 17, 4. 

4 e.g., L. Visidius (Cicero, Phil. 7, 24) or, earlier, Minatu3 Magius of Aeclanum 
(Velleius 2, 16, 2). 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 83 

with the aristocracy of the capital. Like the patricians of Rome, 
they asserted descent from kings and gods, and through all the 
frauds of pedigree and legend could at the least lay claim to a 
respectable antiquity. The Aelii Lamiae alleged an ancestor 
among the Lacstrygones, 1 which was excessive, frivolous and 
tainted by Hellenic myth. Enemies of the Vitellii, of Nuceria, 
produced ignoble revelations to counter the ostensible derivation 
of that municipal family from Faunus and the goddess Vitellia 
through an ancient and extinct patrician house of the early Repub¬ 
lic. 2 Some said that Cicero’s father was a dyer of clothes: others 
carried his lineage back to Attius Tullus, a king of the Volsci 
who had fought against Rome. 3 

Yet there was no lack of evidence, quite plausible and some¬ 
times convincing, in the religion and archaeology of early Italy, 
in names of gods and of places. The family name of the San- 
quinii recalls the Sabine god Sancus; Cicero’s friend Visidius, 
a local dynast somewhere in central Italy, bears a kindred name 
to a deity worshipped at Narnia. 4 Vespasian laughed when adula¬ 
tion invented as ancestor for the Flavii a companion of Hercules: 
but a place, Vespasiae, with ancient monuments of the Vespasii, 
attested the repute of his maternal grandfather from Nursia. 5 
Attempts were made to create a senatorial and even a patrician 
pedigree for certain Octavii. 'Trouble for nothing: there was 
solid and authentic testimony at Velitrae—the name of a town- 
ward there, an altar and a traditional religious observance. 0 

Of certain local dynastic families it could in truth be proved 
as well as stated that they had always been there. The Caecinae 
of Etruscan Volaterrae have their name perpetuated in a modern 
river of the vicinity. 7 The Cilnii were dominant in Arretium, 
hated for their wealth and power. Centuries before, the citizens 
had risen to drive them out. 8 The attempt was as vain as it 
would have been to expel the Aleuadae from Thessalian Larisa. 
Simplified history, at Rome and elsewhere, tells of cities or 
nations, often with neglect of the dynastic houses that ruled 
them in a feudal fashion. 

1 Horace, Odes 3, 17, 1: ‘Aeli vetusto nobilis ab Lamo.’ 

2 Suetonius, Vitellius 1 f. 1 Plutarch, Cicero 1. 

4 L. Visidius (Phil. 7, 24), cf. the ‘deus Visidianus' (Tertullian, Apol. 24), W. 
Schulze, Zur Gcsch. lat. Eigennamen (1904), 123; and, in general with reference to 
this type of name, w r ith numerous examples, ib. 464 ff. (‘theophore Namen’). 

5 Suetonius, Divus Vesp. 1. 6 Id., Divus Aug. 1. 

7 The river Cecina. 

8 Livy 10, 3, 2: ‘Cilnium genus praepotens divitiarum invidia pelli armis 
coeptum.’ 



84 CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

The governing class at Rome had not always disdained the 
aristocracies of other cities. Tradition affirmed that monarchs 
of foreign stock had ruled at Rome. More important than the 
kings were their rivals and heirs in power, the patricians, them¬ 
selves for the most part of alien origin. When Alba Longa fell, 
her gods and her ruling families were transplanted to Rome: 
hence the Julii and the Servilii. Out of the Sabine land came 
Attus Clausus with the army of his clients and settled at Rome, 
the ancestor of th egens Claudia . T Sabine, too, in high probability 
were the Valerii, perhaps the Fabii. 1 2 

These baronial houses brought with them to Rome the cults 
and legends of their families, imposing them upon the religion 
of the Roman State and the history of the Roman People. The 
Secular Games were once an observance of the Valerii; 3 and 
men could remember whole wars waged by a single clan. Such 
families might modify their name to a Latin flexion; but prae- 
nomen or cognomen sometimes recalled their local and alien 
provenance. 4 In strife for power at Rome, the patricians were 
ready to enlist allies wherever they might be found. They spread 
their influence among the local aristocracies by marriage or 
alliance, northwards to Etruria and south into Campania. 5 

The concession of political equality at Rome by the patricians 
in the middle of the fourth century did not portend the triumph 
of the Roman plebs. The earliest new families to reach the 
consulate are plainly immigrant. Not merely the towns of 
Latium—even Etruria and Campania, if not Beneventum in the 
Samnite country, reinforced the new nobility. 6 These foreign 
dynasts were taken up and brought in by certain patrician houses 
for their own political ends and for Rome's greater power; though 


1 Suetonius, Tib. i, &c. Some versions of the legend put the immigration in the 
sixth year of the Republic, others in the regal period. For the evidence, P-W III, 
2662 ff. Doubt about the date need not prejudice the fact. 

2 For the Valerii, cf. Val. Max. 2,4, 5. The Fabii certainly belonged to the settle¬ 
ment on the Quirinal, Livy 5, 46, 1 ff. 

3 As may be inferred from Val. Max. 2, 4, 5. On gentile cults and gods, cf. 
F. Altheim, A History of Roman Religion (1938), 114 ff.; 144 ff. 

4 Note the praenomina ‘Kaeso* and ‘Numerius’ among the Fabii. The cognomen 
‘Nero’ was Sabine (Suetonius, Tib. 1, 2); and ‘Inregillensis’, or rather ‘Regillanus’ 
(cf. P-W in, 2663), probably indicates the village of origin of the Claudii. 

5 For a Claudius who ‘Italiam per clientelas occupare temptavit’ (probably the 
despotic censor), cf. Suetonius, Tib. 2, 2. For their intermarriage with a dynastic 
house of Capua c. 217 B.C., Livy 23, 2, 1 ff. The Fabii seem to have acquired great 
influence in Etruria, cf. Mvinzer, RA, 55 f. 

6 Miinzer, RA y 56 ff. He argues that the Atilii came from Campania (58 f.), 
the Otacilii from Beneventum (72 ff.). 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 85 

nominally plebeian, the new-comers ranked in dignity almost 
with the patriciate of Rome. 

The ITilvii came from Tusculum, the Plautii from Tibur. 1 The 
Marcii are probably a regal and priestly house from the south 
of Latium; 2 and the name of the Licinii is Etruscan, disguised 
by a Latin termination. 3 The plebeian houses might acquire 
wealth and dynastic power at Rome, but they could never enter 
the rigid and defined caste of the patricians. But the earliest 
consular Fasti and the annals of Regal and Republican Rome were 
not immune from their ambitious and fraudulent devices. The 
Marcii were powerful enough to obtrude an ancestor upon the 
list of the kings, Ancus Marcius; and that dubious figure, Marcius 
of Corioli, ostensibly an exile from Rome and Roman at heart, 
perhaps belongs more truly to Latin or Volscian history. The 
Junii could not rise to a king, but they did their best, producing 
that Brutus, himself of Tarquin blood, who expelled the tyrants 
and became the first consul of the Republic. 4 Pride kept the 
legends of the patricians much purer. They did not need to 
descend to fraud, and they could admit an alien origin without 
shame or compunction. 

About the early admissions to power and nobility at Rome 
much will remain obscure and controversial. In itself, the process 
is natural enough; and it is confirmed not a little by subsequent 
and unimpeachable history. Enemies of the dominant family 
of the Scipiones, namely the Fabii and the Valerii, adopted a 
vigorous ally against them, in the person of a wealthy farmer, 
M. Porcius Cato from Tusculum. 5 C. Laelius, the friend of 
Scipio Africanus, probably came from a non-Roman family of 
municipal aristocracy ; 6 and the first Pompeius owed his consulate 
to the backing of the Scipiones. The influence of the Claudii can 
be discerned in the elevation of M. Perperna (cos. 130 B.c.), of 
a name indubitably Etruscan. 7 

1 Pliny, Nil 7, 136 (a Tusculan consul who deserted and became consul at 
Rome in the same year). On the Plautii, Munzer, RA , 44. 

2 W. Schur, Hermes lix (1924), 450 ff. On Marcius Coriolanus, cf. Mommsen, 
Rtimische Forschungen 11, 113 fF.; W. Schur, P-W, Supp. v, 653 ff. 

’ Precisely ‘Lecne’, cf. the Etruscan bilingual inscr. CIEtr. I, 272. Also the 
Calpurnii (Schulze, LE, 138), though they faked a descent from the Sabine Numa 
(Plutarch, Numa 21). The origin of the Caecilii Metelli is not known. Cacculus, 
the god who founded Praeneste, is said to have been their ancestor (Festus, 
P- 38 l). 

4 The consul L. Junius Brutus can hardly be accepted as historical, cf. now P-W, 

Supp. v, 356 ff. 5 MQnzer, RA, 191 ff. 

6 Id., P-W xii, 401. 7 lb. xix, 892 ff.; RA, 95 ff. 



86 


CAESAR'S NEW SENATORS 

But these are exceptions rather than examples. The governing 
oligarchy, not least the dynastic houses of the plebeian nobility, 
had been growing ever closer and more exclusive. Marius, the 
knight from Arpinum, was helped by the Metelli. For merit and 
military service he might enter the senatorial order under their 
protection: they never fancied that he would aspire to the con¬ 
sulate. Marius nursed resentment against the nobiles and sought 
to break through their monopoly of patronage. Through alliance 
with the knights and personal ties with the leading men in the 
towns of Italy he acquired power and advanced partisans to office 
at Rome. 1 

But the Marian party had been defeated and proscribed by 
Sulla. The restored oligarchy, established by violence and con¬ 
fiscation, perpetuated a narrow tradition. Under the old order 
a considerable part of Italy, namely most of Etruria, Umbria 
and the Sabellic peoples of the central highlands, had not belonged 
to the Roman State at all, but were autonomous allies. Italy had 
now become politically united through the extension of the 
Roman franchise, but the spirit and practice of government had 
not altered to fit a transformed state. Men spoke indeed of tola 
Italia . The reality was very different. 2 The recent war of Italy 
against Rome must not be forgotten. When Caesar invaded Italy 
he could reckon on something more than aversion from politics 
and distrust of the government, attested and intelligible even in 
towns and families that had long since been incorporated in the 
Roman State, or at least subjected to Roman influences. In a 
wide region of Italy it was reinforced by hostility to Rome as yet 
unappeased, by the memory of oppression and war, of defeat 
and devastation. Only forty years before Caesar’s invasion, the 
allies of Rome from Asculum in the Picene land through the 
Marsi and Paeligni down to Samnium and Lucania rose against 
Rome and fought for freedom and justice. 3 

They were all hardy, independent and martial peoples, the 
Marsi in the forefront, without whom no triumph had ever been 
celebrated whether they fought against Rome or for her. 4 The 
Marsi provided the first impulsion to the insurrection, a great 

1 The composition of the faction of Marius, an important (and neglected) topic, 
cannot be discussed here. 

- 1 The unification of Italy is often dated much too early. That it can have been 
neither rapid nor easy is demonstrated by the facts of geography and communica¬ 
tions, and by the study of Italian ethnography and Italian dialects. 

' As the Paelignian poet said of his own tribe (Ovid, Amores 3, 15, 9): ‘quam 
sua libertas ad honesta coegerat arma.’ 4 Strabo, p. 241. 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 87 

general, Q. Poppaedius Silo, and the earliest official title of the 
War, Bellum Marsicum. The name Helium Italicum is more com¬ 
prehensive and no less revealing: it was a holy alliance, a coniuratio 
of eight peoples against Rome, in the name of Italy. Italia they 
stamped as a legend upon their coins, and Italia was the new 
state which they established with its capital at Corfinium. 1 This 
was secession. The proposal to extend the Roman franchise to 
the allies was first made by agrarian reformers at Rome, with 
interested motives. A cause of dissension in Roman politics, the 
agitation spread and involved the allies. Reminded of other 
grievances and seeing no redress from Rome after the failure 
and death of their champion, the conservative demagogue 
Livius Drusus, a friend and associate of certain local dynasts, 2 
the Italians took up arms. It was not to extort a privilege but 
to destroy Rome. They nearly succeeded. Not until they had 
been baffled and shattered in war did the fierce Italic! begin 
to give up hope. An amnesty in the form of an offer of the 
citizenship to any who laid down their arms within sixty days 
may have weakened the insurgents by encouraging desertion, 
but did not arrest hostilities everywhere. Samnium remained 
recalcitrant. J 

The contest was not only brutal and bloody, with massacres of 
captives, hostages or non-combatants— it was complicated and em¬ 
bittered by the strife of local factions. Etruria and Umbria, though 
wavering, had remained loyal to Rome: the propertied classes 
had good reason to fear a social revolution. Before peace came 
another civil war supervened, into which Etruria was dragged 
along with the stubborn remnants of the Italian insurgents. 
Marius had many adherents in the Etruscan towns; and all the 
Ramnitcs marched on Rome, not from loyalty to the Marian cause, 
but to destroy the tyrant city. 4 Sulla saved Rome. He defeated 
the Samnite army at the Colline Gate and made a desolation 
of Samnium for ever. Etruria suffered sieges, massacre and ex¬ 
propriation: Arretium and Volaterrae were totally disfranchised. 5 

1 The coins of the Italici (BMC, R. Rep. n, 317 ff.) are highly revealing, above all 
the coin of the general Q. Silo which shows eight warriors swearing a common oath. 

2 For example, Q. Poppaedius Silo, of. Plutarch, Cato minor 2. 

3 A large part of Italy must have been outside the control of the Roman govern¬ 
ment in the years 88- 83 n The Samnites held Nola even till 80 B.c\, Livy, Per. 89. 

4 As Telesinus the Samnite exclaimed (Velleius 2,27,1), ‘eruendam delendamque 
urbem, adiciens numquam defuturos raptores Italicae libertatis lupos nisi silva, 
in quam refugere solerent, esset excisa.’ 

5 Cicero, Pro Caecina 102; Ad Att. 1, 19, 4, &c. Volaterrae held out till 80 B.c\, 
Livy, Per. 89. 




88 CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

After a decade of war Italy was united, but only in name, not 
in sentiment. At first the new citizens had been cheated of 
the full and equal exercise of their franchise, a grant which had 
never been sincerely made; and many Italians had no use for 
it. Loyalties were still personal, local and regional. A hundred 
thousand veterans, settled on the lands of Sulla’s enemies, sup¬ 
ported his domination, promoted the Romanization of Italy and 
kept alive the memory of defeat and suffering. There could be no 
reconciliation until a long time had elapsed. 

Sulla recognized merit among allies or opponents. Minatus 
Magius, a magnate of the Samnite community of Aeclanum, stood 
loyal to Rome, raising a private army conspicuous on Sulla’s side 
at the capture of the town of Pompeii: his two sons became 

f raetors at Rome . 1 A certain Statius fought bravely for San .uum. 

n recognition of valour, wealth and family—and perhaps a 
timely abandonment of the Italian cause—Rome’s enemy entered 
the Roman Senate . 2 

But the vanquished party in the Bellum Ilalicum and the 
Marian sedition was not richly represented in the Roman Senate, 
even by renegades. Pompeius Strabo had a large following in 
Picenum : 3 but these were only the personal adherents of a local 
dynast and Roman politician, or the Roman faction in a torn 
and discordant land. Pompeius’ son inherited: he secured sena¬ 
torial rank or subsequent promotion for partisans such as the 
orator and intriguer Lollius Palicanus, and the military men 
Afranius and Labienus . 4 

The defeated still had to wait for a champion. Cicero was lavish 
with appeals to the sentiments and loyalty of Italy— tota Italia ; 
he was profuse in praise of the virtue and vigour of the novus 
homo. No evidence, however, that he was generous in act and 
policy, no man from remoter Italy whom he helped into the 
Senate, no novus homo for whom he strove in defiance of the 
nobiles to secure the consulate. In their political careers he may 
have encouraged or defended certain of his personal friends like 
M. Caelius Rufus and Cn. Plancius, bankers’ sons both. Caelius 
came from Tusculum and probably needed little help . 5 Plancius, 
from Cicero’s own Volscian country, required and may have 

1 Velleius 2, 16, 2. 

2 Appian, BC 4, 25, 102: 81a 8c 7 r€pi<f)dv€iav epyatv hal 8 td ttAovtqv koa yci'os cV 
to 'P<x>p.aiujv ftovAcvnjpiov dvaKeKXrjficvog. No evidence, however, precisely when 
he became a senator. 3 ILS 8888. Cf. above, p. 28, n. 1. 

4 Above, p. 31. 

5 Cf. MUnzer, P-W ill, 1267, invoking the inscrr. CIL xiv, 2622; 2624; 2627. 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 89 

received more active assistance . 1 Atina’s first senator was very 
recent . 2 But Tusculum, and even Atina, had long been integral 
members of the Roman State. 

It was no part of Cicero’s policy to flood the Senate with muni¬ 
cipal men and capture for imported merit the highest dignity in 
the Roman State. He glorified the memory of Cato and of Marius— 
but it was for himself, as though they were his own ancestors . 3 He 
desired that the sentiment and voice of Italy should be heard at 
Rome—but it was the Italy of the post-Sullan order, and the 
representation, though indirect, was to be adequate and of the 
best, namely his own person. 

Italy was held to be firm for conservative interests. No doubt: 
the propertied classes looked with distrust upon the reform pro¬ 
grammes of Roman tribunes and hated the Roman poor. C. 
Maecenas from Arretium is named among the strong and stead¬ 
fast knights who offered public opposition to M. Livius Drusus ; 4 
and L. Visidius was one of the partisans who watched over the 
life of Cicero when Catilina, threatening revolution, provoked a 
sacred and transient union of interest between Senate and 
knights . 5 The episode also revealed what everybody knew and 
few have recorded—bitter discontent all over Italy, broken men 
and debtors ready for an armed rising, but also, and perhaps 
more disquieting, many municipal aristocrats in sympathy with 
the champion of the oppressed classes . 6 

Caesar had numerous partisans in the regions of Italy that had 
suffered from participation in the Bellum Italicum , the enter¬ 
prises of Marius and the insurrections of Lcpidus and Catilina. 
It is not merely that so many of his soldiers and centurions were 
recruited from the impoverished or martial regions of Italy, as 
their names often testify . 7 All classes came in. The towns of 
Italy welcomed the resurgence of the Marian faction led by a 

1 Pro Plancio 19 ff., contrasting Atina and Tusculum. Plancius’ parent was 
‘princeps iam diu publicanorum’ (ib. 24). 

- Ib. 19. 3 J. Vogt, Homo novus (Stuttgart, 1926), 19 if. 

4 Pro Cluentio 153 : ‘ilia robora populi Romani.’ 5 Phil. 7, 24. 

6 Sallust, BC 17, 4: ‘ad hoc multi ex coloniis et municipiis domi nobiles.’ 
Etruria, an eager ally of Lepidus only fifteen years before, provided the nucleus of 
the movement—this time largely, but not wholly, disappointed Sullan veterans. 
There were plots or risings almost everywhere, including Picenum (ib. 27, 2) and 
the Paelignian territory (Orosius 6, 6, 7). 

7 e.g., the centurion L. Petrosidius (BG 5, 37, 5) and the knight T. Terrasidius 
(3» 7, 4). The latter is a unique name, the former, elsewhere attested only once 
(CIL vi, 24052), is another form of ‘Petrucidius’ or ‘Petrusidius’, ILS 6132b, cf. 
Schulze, LE , 170; Miinzer, P-W xix, 1304 f. Note also the names of the centurion? 
in BelL Afr. 54, 5. 



9 o CAESAR'S NEW SENATORS 

proconsul who, like him, had crushed the Gauls, the traditional 
enemies of Italy. Caesar in his invasion pressed swiftly through 
Picenum towards Corfinium, gathering in the strongholds and 
the recruits of his ad\ -rsaries, with little resistance. Cingulum 
owed recent benefits to Labienus : 1 yet Cingulum was easily 
won. Auximum honoured Pompeius as its patron : 2 but the men 
of Auximum protested that it would be intolerable to refuse ad¬ 
mittance to the proconsul after his great exploits in Gaul . 3 The 
power and wealth of the Pompeii no doubt raised up many enemies 
against them in their own country. Sulmo of the Paeligni opened 
its gates, and the citizens poured forth in jubilation to meet 
Antonius, Caesar’s man; and it was more than the obstinate 
folly of Ahenobarbus that brought on the capitulation of the 
neighbouring city of Corfinium. Pompeius knew better than did 
his allies the oligarchs the true condition of Italy: his decision 
to evacuate the peninsula was taken long before it was manifest 
and announced. 

It is evident enough that Caesar’s new senators, some four 
hundred in number, comprised adherents from all over Italy. 
Like the families proscribed by Sulla, regions where Marian 
influence was strong furnished partisans. The military man 
C. Carrinas is presumably Umbrian or Etruscan . 4 Pansa came 
from Perusia , 5 but was a senator already. The Sabine country, a 
land of hardy democrats, perpetuated the memory of Sertorius 
in the Caesarians Vatinius and Sallustius . 0 They were no doubt 
followed by knights whom Caesar promoted. Campania, again, a 
prosperous region, could show Marian and Caesarian connexions 
in towns like Puteoli, Calcs and Nuceria. The Granii of Puteoli 
were notoriously Marian : 7 a certain Granius Petro is found among 

1 BC i, 15, 2. z JLS 877. 

1 Fur ‘tantis rebus nestis’ (BC r, 13, 1) cf. Caesar’s own remark after Pharsalus, 
Suetonius, Divus lulius 30, 4. 

4 W. Schulze, LZs, 530; Munzer, P-W ill, 1612. C. Carrinas, the son of the 
Marian leader, became ros. sujf. in 43. 

s W. Schulze, LE y 268, cf. the inscr. CJL xr, 1994: ‘Vel. Vibius Ar. Pansa Tro.’ 
His second cognomen , Caetroniunus (JLS 8890), derives from an Etruscan name 
(W. Schulze, ib.). 

C. Sallustius Crispus’ town of origin is said to have been Amiternum (Jerome, 
Chron , p. 15 1 H). A certain P. Vatinius from Reate is recorded, in fact the grand¬ 
father of Caesar’s adherent (Cicero, Tie nat. dearum 2, 6; Yal. Max. 1,8, 1). On 
the Sabine country, Cicero, Pro Ligario 32: ‘ possum fortissimos viros, Sabines, 
tibi probatissimos, totumque agrum Sabinum, florem Italiae ac robur rei publicae, 
proponere. nosti optime homines.’ 

7 P-W vii, 1817 ff. They were a noted commercial family, trading with the East 
(for Granii at Delos see BCH xxxi (1907), 443 f; xxxvi (1912), 41 f.). Two Granii 
were among the partisans declared public enemies in 88 b.c. (Appian, BC 1, 60, 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 91 

Caesar’s senators. 1 The ex-centurion Fango came from the colony 
of Acerrae. 2 

Some of Caesar’s municipal partisans were already in the 
Senate before the outbreak of the Civil War, though no previous 
affiliations or service in his army can be detected. Others, failing 
contradictory record, may be presumed to owe their status to 
him, for example three of the praetors of 44 b.c., dim figures, the 
bearers of obscure names, the first and perhaps the last senators 
of their respective families. 3 

Above all, the confederate peoples of the Helium Italicum now 
taste revenge and requital at last. The Paeligni have to wait a 
generation yet, it is true, before they can show a senator; 4 the 
leading families of the Paeligni and Marsi were broken and im¬ 
poverished ; s and most of the great landowners in Samnium now 
were not of Samnite stock. 6 But the Caesarian general L. Staius 
Murcus was presumably of central Italian origin; 7 and the war¬ 
like Marsi emerge into prominence, as is fitting, with another 
Poppaedius Silo, an historic name. 8 Other dynastic families of 
Italia, providing insurgent leaders in the Bellum Italicum , gain 
from Caesar the dignity they deserved but otherwise might never 
have attained. I lerius Asinius,the first man among the Marrucini, 
fell in battle fighting for Italia. 6 But the family did not perish or 
lapse altogether into poverty or obscurity. C. Asinius Pollio, his 
grandson, a man of taste and talent, won early fame as a speaker 

271). Sulla died after a fit of apoplexy caused by a quarrel with a Gramus of 
Puteoli, 'pnneeps coloniac* (Val. Max. 9, 3, X). 

1 Plutarch, Caesar 16. For another Caesarian Granius, cf. BC 3, 71, 1. 

- CIL x, 375S. 

1 Namely C. Turramus, M. Vehilius and M. Cusinius (Phil. 3, 25 f.). The 
gentilicium ‘Vehilius’ is rare and not noticed by Schulze: compare, however, the 
arly inserr. CIL P, 338! (Piaeneste) For M Cusinius, //..S’ 9O5 : tor another 
netnber of the family, PIP’, C 1(128. 4 1 LS 932 

5 Cicero, Dc damn sua 116: ‘Scatoncm ilium, hominem sua virtute egentem, ut 
s qui in Marsis, ubi natus est, tectum quo imbris vitandi causa succederet iam 
mlium haberet.’ This is the house-agent Vettius (Ad. Alt. 4, 5, 2; 0, 1, 15), clearly 
>f the family of Vettius Scato, a Marsi an insurgent leader. Note also P/ul. 11,4: 
‘Marso ncscio quo Octavio, scclerato latronc atquc egenti.’ 

*' Strabo, p. 249, describes Sulla’s work—-ou#c enaimaro rrpiv rj v auras' rov< tr 
ovofxaTi IJavvLTun' hi 4 <f>d€ip(v rj oc T 7 j<: 'IthXIcls 

7 ILS 885, nr. Sulmo of the Paeligni, but not his home, for the first Paelignian 
senator comes later (ILS 932). Perhaps Marsian, cf. the name on an early dedica¬ 
tory inscr. beside Lake Fueinus, CIL F, 387. For other new senators of non-Latin 
stock, Calvisius and Statilius, cf. below, p. 199 and p. 237. 

K Poppaedius Silo commanded troops for Vcntidius in 39 Ti.c., Dio 48, 41, 1. 
On 'Poppaedius’, the true form (not ‘Pompaedius’), cf. W. Schulze, LE , 367, and 
the inscr. from the Marsic land mentioning a Q. Poppaedius (N. d. Scav., 1892, 32). 

9 Livy, Per. 73. 



92 CAESAR'S NEW SENATORS 

in the courts of Rome, making enemies—and friends—in high 
places. 1 Pollio was with Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. 

Herennius was a general of the insurgents in Picenum; and a 
Picene Herennius, presumably his grandson, turns up as a senator 
and consul in the revolutionary period. 2 Most famous of all was 
P. Ventidius, the army contractor. All posterity knows Ventidius 
as a muleteer. 3 His career was laborious, but his origin may have 
been reputable. History has record of a family of Ventidii, 
municipal magistrates at Auximum, enemies of the Pompeii. 4 
When the young Pompeius raised his private army, he had to 
expel the Ventidii from that city. Picenum was the scene of 
faction and internecine strife. Not only the Italici are hostile to 
Pompeius and the legitimate government of Rome. Caesar has 
a mixed following, some stripped from Pompeius, others not to 
be closely defined: an origin from the towns of Picenum can be 
surmised for certain of Caesar’s partisans, whether ex-Pompeian 
senators or knights promoted under the Dictatorship. 5 

The union of the alien and discordant stocks of Italy into 
something that resembled a nation, with Rome as its capital, was 
not consummated by orators or by political theorists: the slow 
process of peaceful change, the gradual adoption of the Latin 
tongue and Roman ways was brutally accelerated by violence and 
confiscation, by civil wars, by the Dictatorship and by the Revo¬ 
lution. The role of Caesar is evident and important—no occasion, 
therefore, to exaggerate his work, in motive or in effects. That 
he was aware of the need to unify Italy will perhaps be inferred 
from his municipal legislation. 6 Whoever succeeded to power 
after a civil war would be confronted with the task of creating a 

1 Ad jam. 10, 31, 2 f. He prosecuted C. Cato (Tacitus, Dial. 34, 7), not, how¬ 
ever, an important person. The powerful enemies to whom Pollio makes reference 
in his letter cannot be identified. 

• T. Herennius (Eutropius 5, 3, 2), M. Herennius (cos. sajj. 34) and M. Heren¬ 
nius Picens (cos. sufj. a.d. i) presumably belong to the same family. 

1 So Cicero described him (Pliny, NH 7, j 35) and so did Plancus (Ad jam. 10, 
18, 3). Really an army contractor (Gellius 15, 4, 3), cf. above, p. 71. 

4 Plutarch, Pompeius 6. 

5 Perhaps for Gabinius (above, p. 31). L. Nonius Asprenas may well be Picene, 
cf. ‘L. Nonius T.f.Vel.’ in the consilium of Pompeius Strabo (ILS 8888, cf. Cichorius, 
R. Studien, 170). Likewise (ib. 175) ‘L. Minicius L. f. Vel.* (cf. CIL J-, 1917 
ILS 5391, Cupra Maritima). Now' Caesar’s legate L. Minucius Basilus owed his 
name to his,maternal uncle, a wealthy man (P-W xv, 1947): by birth he was M. 
Satrius (P-W 11 A, 190), and is described as ‘patronus agri Piccni et Sabini’ (Cicero, 
De off. 3, 74). 

6 On which cf. H. Rudolph, Stadt u. Stoat im rdmischen Italien (1935). His 
main thesis, however, is firmly contested by Stuart Jones and by Cary, JRS xxvi 
(1936), 268 ff.; ib. xxvn, 48 ff. 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 93 

res publica constituta —and that, after the Bellum Italicum and the 
enfranchisement of Italy, could not be confined to Rome, but 
must embrace all Italy. 

That Italy should at last enter the government of the enlarged 
state is a fair notion, but perhaps anachronistic and not the true 
motive of Caesar’s augmentation of the Senate. He brought in his 
own partisans, men of substance or the newly enriched-the 
Etruscan or the Marsian, the colonial Roman, the native mag¬ 
nate from Spain or Narbonensis. They represented, not regions, 
but a class in society and a party in politics. But even now the 
work had much farther to go in so far as Italy was concerned: the 
Revolution had barely begun. 

A unity in terms of geography but in nothing else, the penin¬ 
sula had been a mosaic of races, languages and dialects. The 
advance of alien stocks in the governing hierarchy of Rome can 
be discovered from nomenclature. 1 The earliest accessions may 
sometimes be detected in the alien roots of their names, to which 
they give a regular and Latin termination — not so the more 
recent, with foreign endings; and the local distribution of the 
non-Latin gentile names of Italy often permits valid conclusions 
about origins. Etruscan names, of three types, point to Etruria 
and the adjacent areas subject to the influence of its ancient 
civilization. 2 The earliest consuls bearing these names all belong, 
as is appropriate, to families that furnished prominent partisans 
to the cause of Marius. 3 Another termination is found not only 
in these regions but extends to Picenum and the Sabine country. 4 
Above all, there is a type peculiar to the Sabellian peoples, thickest 
of all in the heart of the Apennines among the archaic tribes of 
the Marsi and Paeligni, extending thence but growing thinner to 
Picenum northwards and south to Campania and Samnium. s Such 
alien and non-Latin names are casually revealed in the lowest ranks 
of the Roman Senate, before Sulla as well as after, borne by 

1 W. Schulze, LE , passim ; Miinzer, RA, 46 ff. (‘Die Einblirgerung fremder Her- 
rcngeschlechter’). 

Viz., gentile names with the endings ‘-a’, ’-as’, ‘-anus’. 

•’ M. Perperna (cos. 130), C. Carrinas (cos. suff. 43), C. Norbanus (cos. 83). 

4 Viz., ‘-enus’ and ‘-icnus\ cf. P. Willems, LeSenat 1, 181; W. Schulze, LE, 104 ft. 
The earliest consuls are P. Alfenus Varus (stiff. 39) and L. Passienus Rufus (ror. 
4 B.c.): the notorious Salvidicnus Rufus perished when cos. des. (in 40). C. Rillienus 
had been a potential consul c. 105 -100 b.c., cf. Cicero, Brutus 175. 

5 Viz., ‘-idius', ‘-edius’, ‘-iedius’. Compare the thorough investigation of A. 
Schulten, Klio II (1902), 167ft.; 440ft.; 111 (1903), 235 ft. (with statistics and 
maps). The first consul is presumably T. Didius, or Deidius (98), then a long gap 
till P. Ventidius (cos. suff. 43). Names in ‘-isms’ and ‘-asms’ also deserve study. 
Note the Caesarian C. Calvisius Sabinus (cos. 39 B.c.), on whom below, p. 199. 



94 CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

obscure men. 1 That might be expected: it is the earliest consuls 
that convey the visible evidence of social and political revolution. 

The party of Caesar shows a fair but not alarming proportion 
of non-Latin names. The family and repute of certain Italici 
now admitted to the Senate must not obscure the numerous 
new senators from certain older regions of the Roman State 
which hitherto had produced very few. Cautious or frugal, 
many knights shunned politics altogether. Sulla had taught them 
a sharp lesson. Nor would a seat in the lower ranks of the Senate 
at Rome have been an extreme honour and unmixed blessing to 
the descendant of Etruscan kings—or even to an Italian magnate. 

Of the consulate there had been scant prospect in the past. 
But the triumph of a military leader, reviving the party of 
Marius, might promise change. 2 Cicero claimed that in the space 
of thirty years he was the first knight’s son to become consul. He 
was correct—but other novi homines , socially more eminent, had 
not been debarred in that period; and Cicero was soon to witness 
the consulates of Murena and of Pompeius’ men, Afranius and 
Gabinius. 3 After that, no more novi homines as consuls on the 
Fasti of the Tree State, but an effulgence of historic names, 
ominous of the end. 4 

Caesar’s Dictatorship meant the curbing of the oligarchy, pro¬ 
motion for merit. Yet there is nothing revolutionary about the 
choice of his candidates for the consulate—the same principle 
holds as for his legates in the Gallic campaigns. 1 * Nine consuls 
took office in the years 48 44 b.c., all men with senatorial rank 
before the outbreak of the Civil War. Five of them were nobiles , 
with patricians in high and striking relief. 0 The four novi homines 
were all signalized by military service in Gaul. 7 

1 For examples, P. Willems, he Senat I, 181 ; R. Symc, BSR Papers xiv (1938), 
23 f. C. Vibienus (Pro Milone 37) and the one-legged Pompeian senator Sex. 
Teidius (Asconius 28 p. 32 Clark, cf. Plutarch, Pompeius 64) may be mentioned. 

2 C. Flavius Fimbria, a rtrwus homo (cos. 104) was certainly a partisan of Marius. 
T. Didius (98), C. Coclius Caldus (94), and M. Herennius (93) may have been 
helped by him. 

3 L. Licinius Murena (cos. 62), of a distinguished family of praetorian rank (Pro 
Murena 41), was the first consul from Lanuvium (ib. 86). 

4 In each of the years 54 49 n.e. one of the two consuls was of patrician extrac¬ 
tion: and three of the plebeians were Claudii Marcelli. 

5 Among his legates is found no man with a name ending in ‘-idius’, only one 
‘-enus’, the Picene Labienus. 

6 M. Aemilius Lepidus (46), Q. Fabius Maximus (45) and P. Cornelius Dolabella 
(cos. suff. 44) were patrician, while P. Servilius Isauricus (48) was ultimately of 
patrician stock. M. Antonius was plebeian. 

7 Namely Q. Fufius Calenus (47), P. Vatinius (47), C. Trebonius (45), C. 
Caninius Rebilus (cos. suff. 45). 



CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 95 

With the designations fcr the next year, Hirtius and Pansa, the 
level of social eminence fell a little, 1 but was to rise again in 42 
with two of the marshals, the noble D. Junius Brutus and the 
novus homo L. Munatius Plancus, of a reputable family from 
Tibur; 2 and Caesar probably intended that M. Brutus and C. 
Cassius should be consuls in 41 B.c. 3 But before these disposi¬ 
tions could all take effect, civil war broke out again and the 
military leaders accelerated the promotion of the most efficient 
of their partisans without regard for law or precedent, appoint¬ 
ing numerous suffect consuls as well. For all their admitted 
talents, it is by no means likely that the Dictator would have 
given the consulate to Ventidius or to Balbus—he did not gratify 
the expectations of Rabirius; and who at this time had ever 
heard of Salvidienus Rufus, Vipsanius Agrippa and Statilius 
Taurus? 

Along with the survivors of the Catonian party, Pompeians 
such as Q. Ligarius and obscure individuals like D. Turullius or 
Cassius of Parma, whose former history and political activity evade 
detection, certain of the marshals, adherents of long standing who 
had fought in Gaul, conspired to assassinate their leader. 4 The 
soured military man Ser. Sulpicius Galba alleged personal resent¬ 
ment: he had not been made consul. 5 To the Picene landowner 
L. Minucius Basil us, a not altogether satisfactory person, Caesar 
refused the government of a province, offering a sum of money 
in compensation. 6 But L. Tillius Cimber,C.Trebonius(theson of 
a Roman knight), consul in 45, and D. Junius Brutus, designated 
for 42, owed honours and advancement to the Dictator. 7 Brutus, 
indeed, an especial friend and favourite, was named in his will 
among the heirs by default. 8 

Brutus was a nobilis , Galba a patrician. Yet the opposition to 
Caesar did not come in the main from the noble or patrician 
elements in his party: Antonius from loyalty and Lepidus from 

1 A. Hirtius was probably the son of a municipal magistrate from Ferentinum 
in Latium, ILS 5342 ff. On Pansa, a magnate from Perusia, above, p. 90. 

2 Horace, Odes 1,7, 21. A Munatius is attested as aedile there on an early inscr., 
ILS 6231. 

3 Phil. 8, 27 and other evidence, cf. Gelzer, P-W x, 987. 

_ 4 For the list of the conspirators, Drumann-Groebe, Gesih. Roms ill 2 , 627 ft.; 

P-Wx, 254 f. 

5 An unsuccessful candidate for 49 b.c. (BG 8, 50, 4). 

6 Dio 43, 47, 5. On his deserved and unedifying end, Appian, BC 3, 98, 409. 

7 On Cimber (whose origin cannot be discovered), cf. P-W, vi a, 1038 ff.; on 
Trebonius, ib. 2274 ff- 

8 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 83, 2. For his connexions, above, p. 64, n. 2. 



96 CAESAR’S NEW SENATORS 

caution would have repelled the advances of the Liberators. The 
Dictator left, and could leave, no heir to his personal rule. But 
Antonius was both a leading man in the Caesarian party and 
consul, head of the government. The Ides of March could make 
no difference to that. When the tyrant fell and the constitution 
was restored, would Antonius be strong enough to hold party and 
government together ? 



VII. THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 


C AESAR lay dead, stricken by twenty-three wounds. The 
Senate broke up in fear and confusion, the assassins made 
their way to the Capitol to render thanks to the gods of the Roman 
State. They had no further plans—the tyrant was slain, therefore 
liberty was restored. 

A lull followed and bewilderment. Sympathizers came to the 
Capitol but did not stay long, among them the senior statesman 
Cicero and the young P. Cornelius Dolabella arrayed in the 
insignia of a consul; for Caesar had intended that Dolabella 
should have the vacant place when he resigned and departed to 
the Balkans. The other consul, the redoubtable M. Antonius, 
took cover. Repulsing the invitations of the Liberators, he 
secured from Calpurnia the Dictator’s papers and then consulted 
in secret with the chief men of the Caesarian faction, such as 
Balbus, the Dictator’s secretary and confidant, Hirtius, designated 
consul for the next year, and Lepidus the Master of the Horse, 
now left in an anomalous and advantageous position. Lepidus 
had troops under his command, with results at once apparent. 
At dawn on March 16th he occupied the Forum with armed men. 
Lepidus and Balbus were eager for vengeance; 1 Antonius, how¬ 
ever, sided with the moderate and prudent Hirtius. He sum¬ 
moned the Senate to meet on the following day in the Temple 
of Tellus. 

In the meantime, the Liberators, descending for a brief space 
from the citadel, had made vain appeal to the populace in the 
Forum. A speech of Marcus Brutus delivered on the Capitol 
the next day likewise fell flat. The mob was apathetic or hostile, 
not to be moved by the logical, earnest and austere oratory of 
Brutus. How different, how fiery a speech would Cicero have 
composed; 2 but Cicero was not present. The Liberators re¬ 
mained ensconced upon the Capitol. Their coup had been 
countered by the Caesarian leaders, who, in negotiation with 
them, adopted a firm and even menacing tone. D. Brutus was 
in despair. 3 

1 At least according to Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 27, 106. 

2 Ad Att. 15, 1 a, 2: ‘scripsissem ardentius.’ 

3 Compare the tone of his letter to M. Brutus and to Cassius, Ad fain. 11, 1. 
The dating of this crucial document has been much disputed. The early morning 



9 8 THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

On the morning of March 17th the Senate rnet. Antonius took 
charge of the debate, at once thwarting the proposal of Ti. 
Claudius Nero, who demanded special honours for the tyranni¬ 
cides. Yet Antonius did not strive to get them condemned. 
Rejecting both extremes, he brought forward a practical measure. 
Though Caesar was slain as a tyrant by honourable and patriotic 
citizens, the acta of the Dictator—and even his last projects, as 
yet unpublished—were to have the force of law. The need of 
this was patent and inevitable: many senators, many of the 
Liberators themselves, held preferment, office, or provinces from 
the Dictator. Vested interests prevailed and imposed the respect¬ 
able pretext of peace and concord. Cicero made a speech, pro¬ 
posing an amnesty. 

In this simple fashion, through a coalition of Caesarians and 
Republicans, Rome received constitutional government again. 
Concord was advertised in the evening when the Caesarian 
leaders and the Liberators entertained one another to banquets. 
The next day, further measures were passed. On the insistence 
of Caesar’s father-in-law, L. Piso, the Senate decided to recog¬ 
nize the Dictator’s will, granting a public funeral. 

Antonius had played his hand with cool skill. The Liberators 
and their friends had lost, at once and for ever, the chance of 
gaining an ascendancy over the Senate. The people, unfriendly 
to begin with, turned sharply against them. Accident blended 
with design. The funeral oration delivered by Antonius (March 
20th) may not have been intended as a political manifesto of the 
Caesarian party; and the results may have outstripped his de¬ 
signs. In form, the speech was brief and moderate: 1 the audience 
was inflammable. At the recital of the great deeds of Caesar and 


of March 17th, ably argued by O. E. Schmidt, accepted by many and reinforced 
by Mtinzer (P-W, Supp. v, 375 f.), is certainly attractive. A case can be made 
out for March 21st or 22nd, cf. S. Accame, Riv. di jil. lxij (1934), 201 ff. 

1 Suetonius, Divus Julius 84, 2: ‘quibus perpauca a se verba addidit.’ An 
elaborate, passionate and dramatic speech of Antonius is recorded by certain his¬ 
torians (csp. Appian, on whom see E. Schwartz, P-W 11, 230), but is suspect. It 
is by no means clear that it suited his plans to make a violent demonstration against 
the Liberators—neither Antonius nor the Caesarian party were securely in pow r er. 
The earliest contemporary evidence (Ad Att. 14, 10, 1, April 19th) does not 
definitely incriminate him. By October, however, the situation has changed, the 
story has gained colour and strength (Phil. 2, 91). Even if the letter Ad Jam. 
11, 1 were to be dated immediately after the funeral (see the preceding note), it 
would not prove, though it might support, the view that Antonius intended to 
cause trouble. D. Brutus writes: ‘quo in statu simus, cognoscite. heri vesperi apud 
me Hirtius fuit; qua mente esset Antonius demonstravit, pessima scilicet et infide- 
lissimad 



TIIE CONSUL ANTONI US 99 

the benefactions bestowed by his will upon the people of Rome, 
the crowd broke loose and burned the body in the Forum. In 
fear for their lives, the Liberators barricaded themselves in their 
houses. Nor, as the days passed, did it become safe for them to 
be seen in public. The mob set up an altar and a pillar in the 
Forum, offering prayers and a cult to Caesar. Prominent among 
the authors of disorder was a certain Herophilus (or Amatius), 
who sought to pass himself off' as a grandson of C. Marius. The 
Liberators departed from Rome early in April, and took refuge 
in the small towns in the neighbourhood of the capital. 

Long before this, the futility of their heroic deed was manifest 
to the assassins and to their sympathizers. The harm had already 
been done. Not the funeral of Caesar but the session of March 
17th, that was the real calamity. 1 Both the acts and the party of 
Caesar survived his removal. Of necessity, given the principles 
and nature of the conspiracy: the slaying of a tyrant, and that 
action alone, was the end and justification of their enterprise, not 
to be altered by wisdom after the event and the vain regrets of 
certain advisers and critics—‘a manly deed but a childish lack 
of counsel/ 2 Brutus and Cassius, since they were praetors, should 
have usurped authority and summoned the Senate to meet upon 
the Capitol, it was afterwards urged. 3 But that was treason. 
They should not have left the consul Antonius alive. But there 
was no pretext or desire for a reign of terror. Brutus had insisted 
that Antonius be spared. 4 Had the faction of Brutus and Cassius 
forsworn its principles and appealed to arms, their end would 
have been rapid and violent. The moderates, the party of Caesar, 
the veterans in Italy, and the Caesarian armies in the provinces 
would have been too strong. 

The Liberators had not planned a seizure of power. Their 
occupation of the Capitol was a symbolical act, antiquarian and 
even Hellenic. But Rome was not a Greek city, to be mastered 
from its citadel. The facts and elements of power were larger than 
that. To carry through a Roman revolution in orderly form, in 
the first place the powers of the highest magistracy, the auctoritas 
of the ex-consuls and the acquiescence of the Senate were requi¬ 
site. Of the consuls, Antonius was not to be had, Dolabella an 
uncertain factor. The consuls designate for the next year, 

1 Ad Att. 14, 10, 1. 

2 lb. 14, 21, 3: ‘animo virili, consilio puerili/ 

3 lb. 14, 10, 1; 15, 11, 2. 

4 Cf. esp. Ad Att. 15, 11, 2. Cicero, speaking in the presence of Brutus, studi¬ 
ously suppresses his favourite topic, the failure to assassinate Antonius. 



100 


THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

Hirtius and Pansa, honest Caesarians, were moderate men and 
lovers of peace, representing a large body in the Senate, whether 
Caesarian or neutral. The Senate, thinned by war and recently 
replenished by the nominees of the Dictator, lacked prestige and 
confidence. The majority was for order and security. They were 
not to be blamed. Of consulars, the casualties in the Civil Wars 
had been heavy: only two of the Pompeians, professed or genuine, 
were left. 1 Hence a lack of experience, ability and leadership in 
the Senate, sorely to be felt in the course of the next eighteen 
months. Among the survivors, a few Caesarians, of little weight, 
and some discredited beyond remedy: for the rest, the aged, the 
timid and the untrustworthy. Cicero, who had lent his eloquence 
to all political causes in turn, was sincere in one thing, loyalty to 
the established order. His past career showed that he could not 
be depended on for action or for statesmanship; and the con¬ 
spirators had not initiated him into their designs. The public 
support of Cicero would be of inestimable value—after a revolu¬ 
tion had succeeded. Thus did Brutus lift up his bloodstained 
dagger, crying the name of Cicero with a loud voice. 2 The appeal 
was premature. 

Nor could the faction of Brutus and Cassius reckon upon the 
citizen-body of the capital. To the cold logic and legalistic pleas 
of the Republican Brutus, this motley and excitable rabble turned 
a deaf ear; for the august traditions of the Roman Senate and the 
Roman People they had no sympathy at all. The politicians of 
the previous age, whether conservative or revolutionary, despised 
so utterly the plebs of Rome that they felt no scruples when they 
enhanced its degradation. Even Cato admitted the need of 
bribery, to save the Republic and secure the election of his own 
kinsman Bibulus. 3 

Debauched by demagogues and largess, the Roman People 
was ready for the Empire and the dispensation of bread and 
games. The plebs had acclaimed Caesar, the popular politician, 
with his public boast of the Julian house, descended from 
the kings of Rome and from the immortal gods; they buried 
his daughter Julia with the honours of a princess; they cheered 
at the games, the shows and the triumphs of the Dictator. In 
Caesar’s defiance of the Senate and his triumph over noble 
adversaries, they too had a share of power and glory. Discon¬ 
tent, it is true, could be detected among the populace of Rome in 

1 See further below, p. 164. 2 Cicero, Phil. 2, 28. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 19, 1. 



THE CONSUL ANTONIUS ioi 

the last months of Caesar’s life, artfully fomented by his enemies; 
and Caesar, who had taken up arms in defence of the rights of the 
tribunes, was manoeuvred into a clash with the champions of the 
People. Symptoms only, no solid ground for optimistic interpre¬ 
tation. Yet even after the funeral of Caesar and the ensuing 
disorders, Brutus appears to have persisted in irrational fancies 
about that Roman People which he had liberated from despotism. 
As late as July he expected popular manifestations of sympathy 
at the games furnished by him, in absence, in honour of the god 
Apollo. Apollo already had another favourite. 

More truly representative of the Roman People should have 
been the soldiers of the legions and the inhabitants of the towns 
of Italy. With the veterans, the Liberators were at once con¬ 
fronted by a solid block of vested interests. They were careful 
to profess in public an intention to maintain all the grants of the 
Dictator. Promises were added and privileges, generous but not 
carrying full conviction. 1 Nor were the veterans to be won merely 
by material advantage. They became truculent and tumultuous. 
Not without excuse: their Imperator , in defence of whose station 
and dignity they took up arms against his enemies, had been 
treacherously slain by those whom he trusted and promoted—by 
the marshals Decimus Brutus and Trebonius before all. The 
honour of the army had been outraged. 

Though Rome and the army were degenerate and Caesarian, 
respect for liberty, for tradition, and for the constitution might 
appear to survive in Italy. Not everywhere, or among all classes. 
When Brutus and Cassius during the months of April and May 
lurked in the little towns of Latium in the vicinity of Rome, they 
gathered adherents from the local aristocracies. 2 The degree of 
sympathy for the Republican cause defies any close estimate: it 
may not be measured by optimistic and partisan proclamations 
that describe the Liberators as guarded by the devoted loyalty 
of all Italy. 3 Brutus and Cassius were warmly welcomed by the 
propertied classes in the municipia , deferential and flattered by 
the presence of Roman nobiles , whom even Caesarian consuls 
acclaimed as ‘clarissimi viri\ 4 Whether these idealistic or snobbish 
young men from the towns possessed the will and the resources 
for action, and eventually for civil war, is another question. 
Their generous ardour was not put to the test. 

1 Appian, BC 2, 140, 581; 3, 2, 5. 2 Ad Att . 14, 6, 2; 20, 4 

3 Phil. 10, 7. 

4 Phil. 2, 5: ‘quos tu ipse clarissimos viros soles appellare.’ 



102 


THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

The manoeuvres of the Republican partisans excited disquiet 
among those responsible for the maintenance of public order and 
the new government. Various intrigues were afoot. Dolabella 
had suppressed a recrudescence of the irregular cult of Caesar 
at Rome: it was hoped that he might be induced to support the 
Liberators. 1 Further, attempts were made to convert Hirtius to 
their cause. 2 But Dolabella, though not impervious to flattery, 
was fortified by distrust of his father-in-law and by financial 
subsidies from Antonius, while Hirtius expressed his firm dis¬ 
approval. 3 Antonius was apprised. When he requested that the 
bands of Republican partisans be dissolved, Brutus agreed. 4 

Demonstrations of sympathy cost nothing. Money was another 
matter. The Liberators sought to inveigle their supporters into 
contributing to a private fund: with small success—the men from 
the municipia were notorious and proverbial for parsimony. Then 
the financier C. Flavius, Brutus’ friend, approached Atticus with 
an invitation to place himself at the head of a consortium of 
bankers. 5 Atticus, anxiously avoiding all political entanglements, 
refused and wrecked the venture. For friendship, however, or for 
safety, it was advisable to maintain or contract ties with all parties. 
Atticus was quite willing to oflFer Brutus private subsidies; and he 
later made a grant to Servilia. 

Rome and Italy, if lost, could be recovered in the provinces, as 
Rompeius knew—and as some of his allies did not. The price was 
civil war. Even had the Liberators been willing to pay it, they 
could find little to encourage them abroad. The execution of 
their plot allowed no delay, no attempt to secure a majority of 
the army commanders for their cause—and they did not think 
that it was necessary. At the time of Caesar’s death, the armies 
were held by his partisans, save that certain arrangements were 
still pending—the Dictator appears to have designated or even 
allotted provinces to three of the Liberators, the consular Tre- 
bonius, D. Brutus and Tillius Cimber. 6 After the assassination 

1 Ad Att. 14, 20, 4: ‘p rorsus ibat res; nunc auteni videmur habituri ducem: 
quod unum municipia bonique desiderant.’ Cf. the letter of flattery to Dolabella, 
Ad fam. 9, 14. The sagacious Atticus became impatient of the praising of Dola¬ 
bella, Ad Att. 14, 19, 5 

2 Cassius urged Cicero to get at Hirtius, Ad Att. 15, 5, 1. 

3 Ad Att. 15, 1, 3: ‘non .minus se nostrorum anna timere quam Antoni.’ A 
little later Hirtius sent a warning letter to Cicero, Ad Att. 15, 6, 2 f. 

4 Ad jam. 11,2 (an open letter of Brutus and Cassius). 

5 Nepos, Vita Attici 8, 1 ff. 

6 The ancient evidence about provinces and their governors in 44 B.c. suffers 
from confusion and inaccuracy: it has been brought into satisfactory order through 



THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 103 

and before the Dictator’s acta were ratified on March 17th, it 
was feared that the consul would not allow them to take over their 
provinces. 1 What happened is obscure—the provinces in question 
may have been allotted on March 18th. Early in April Decimus 
Brutus set out for Cisalpine Gaul; about the same time, it may be 
presumed, 1 Treboniusw 7 ent to Asia,Cimber to Bithvnia. There were 
no legions at all in Asia and in Bithynia, only tw o in the Cisalpina. 

For the rest, the only support in the provinces was distant 
and negligible—the private adventurers Sex. Pompeius and Q. 
Caecilius Bassus. In Spain young Pompeius, a fugitive after the 
Battle of Munda, conducted guerrilla warfare with some success 
against the Caesarian governors in the far West. In Svria Bassus 
had stirred up civil war two years before, seizing the strong place 
of Apamea. His forces were inconsiderable, one or two legions; 
and Apamea w r as closely invested by Caesarian generals. 

So much for provinces and armies. Had the Liberators plotted 
real revolution instead of the mere removal of an autocrat, they 
would clearly have failed. Yet even now, despite the deplorable 
fact that the Republicans did not dare to show themselves before 
the Roman People, all w 7 as not lost. The Dictator was dead, 
regretted by many, but not to be avenged; an assertion of liberty 
had been answered by the Caesarian leaders with concord in 
w^ord and action. As the coalition of March 17th corresponded 
with political facts and w y ith personal interests, it w 7 as not altogether 
foolish to hope for normal and ordered government w hen the storm 
had spent its strength, when the popular excitement had subsided: 
time and forbearance might triumph over violence, heroism or 
principle. The salutary respite from politics and political strife 
so firmly imposed by the Dictatorship might even be prolonged. 
It all turned upon the Caesarian consul. 

Marcus Antonius was one of the most able of Caesar’s young 
men. A nobilis , born of an illustrious but impoverished plebeian 
family (his grandfather w r as a great orator, his father a good- 
natured but careless person), the years of pleasure and adventure 
brought him, after service with Gabinius in Syria, to brighter 
prospects, to the camps and the councils of Caesar. Antonius 
was an intrepid and dashing cavalry leader: yet at the same time 
a steady and resourceful general. He commanded the left wing 


the researches of O. E. Schmidt {JahrbiicherJiir cl. Phil., Supp. xm (1884), 665 ff.), 
E. Schwartz ( Hermes xxxin (1898), 185 ff.), and W. Sternkopf (ib. xlvii (1912), 
321 ff.). The view's of Sternkopf will here be accepted for the most part. 

2 Ad Jam. 11, 1, above, p. 97. 



io 4 THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

on the field of Pharsalus. But Antonius’ talents were not those 
of a mere soldier. Caesar, a good judge of men, put him in control 
of Italy more than once during the Civil Wars, in 49 B.c. when 
Antonius was only tribune of the plebs, and after Pharsalus, as 
Master of the Horse, for more than a year. The task was delicate, 
and Caesar may not have been altogether satisfied with his 
deputy. Yet there is no proof of any serious estrangement. 1 
Lepidus, it is true, was appointed consul in 46 and Master of 
the Horse: no evidence, however, that Caesar prized him above 
Antonius for loyalty or for capacity. Lepidus was the elder man 
—and a patrician as well. Lepidus retained the position of 
nominal deputy to the Dictator. But Lepidus was to take over 
a province in 44, and Antonius, elected consul for that year, would 
be left in charge of the government when Caesar departed. 

Born in 82 b.c., Antonius was now in the prime of life, richly 
endowed with strength of body and grace of manner, courageous, 
alert and resourceful, but concealing behind an attractive and 
imposing facade certain defects of character and judgement that 
time and the licence of power were to show up in deadly abun¬ 
dance. The frank and chivalrous soldier was no match in state¬ 
craft for the astute politicians who undermined his predominance, 
stole his partisans, and contrived against him the last coup d'etat 
of all, the national front and the uniting of Italy. 

The memory of Antonius has suffered damage multiple and 
irreparable. The policy which he adopted in the East and his 
association with the Queen of Egypt were vulnerable to the moral 
and patriotic propaganda of his rival. Most of that will be coolly 
discounted. From the influence of Cicero it is less easy to escape. 
The Philippics , the series of speeches in which he assailed an 
absent enemy, are an eternal monument of eloquence, of ran¬ 
cour, of misrepresentation. Many of the charges levelled against 
the character of Antonius—such as unnatural vice or flagrant 
cowardice—are trivial, ridiculous or conventional. That the 
private life of the Caesarian soldier was careless, disorderly, and 
even disgraceful, is evident and admitted. He belonged to a class 
of Roman nobles by no means uncommon under Republic or 

1 Apart from Plutarch, Antonius io, the only evidence is Cicero, Phil, z, 71 ff, 
which betrays its own inadequacy. The fact that Antonius, unlike gallant young 
Dolabella, did not participate in the African and Spanish campaigns, will not be 
put down to his cowardice or to Caesar’s distrust. Dolabella had been a great 
nuisance in 47 b.c., during Caesar’s absence. If Antonius stayed in Italy, it was 
precisely because he was dependable and most useful there, whether as Master of 
the Horse or without any official title. 



THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 105 

Empire, whose unofficial follies did not prevent them from rising, 
when duty called, to services of conspicuous ability or the most 
disinterested patriotism. For such men, the most austere of his¬ 
torians cannot altogether suppress a timid and perhaps perverse 
admiration. A blameless life is not the whole of virtue, and in¬ 
flexible rectitude may prove a menace to the Commonwealth. 1 

Though the private conduct of a statesman cannot entirely be 
divorced from his public policy and performance, Roman aristo¬ 
cratic standards, old and new, with their insistence upon civic 
virtue or personal liberty, accorded a wide indulgence. The 
failings of Antonius may have told against him—but in Rome 
and in Italy rather than with the troops and in the provinces. 
Yet they were nothing hew or alarming in the holders of office 
and power at Rome. In the end it was not debauchery that ruined 
Antonius, but a fatal chain of miscalculations both military and 
political, and a sentiment of loyalty incompatible with the chill 
claims of statesmanship. But that was later. To gain a fair 
estimate of the acts and intentions of Antonius in the year of his 
consulate, it will be necessary to forget both the Philippics and 
the War of Actium. The political advocate and the verdict of 
conventional history must be constrained to silence for a time. 

With the suppression of the Dictator and return to normal 
government, the direction of the State passed at once to the 
supreme magistrates. Antonius displayed consummate skill as 
a statesman. His own security and the maintenance of order 
dictated the same salutary policy. By force of argument and 
personal authority, Antonius brought the session of March 17th 
to terms of compromise—even to a spirit of concord. The degree 
of his responsibility for the turn which events took at the funeral 
will be debated: it was certainly in his interest to alarm the Senate 
and reinforce the argument for firm concord in the governing 
class—and a firm control of affairs by the consuls. 

To this end Antonius the consul tolerated for a time the popular 
cult in the Forum and the seditious intrigues of the mob-leader 
Herophilus. Then on a sudden he intervened, punishing the 
impostor with death. The Liberators had fled the city. Antonius 

1 Tacitus commends the voluptuary Petronius, an excellent proconsul of 
Bithynia (Ann. 16, 18), Otho, who governed Lusitania with integrity (ib. 13, 46) 
and took his own life rather than prolong a civil war (Hist. 2, 47), and L. Vitellius: 
‘eo dc homine haud sum ignarus sinistram in urbe famam, pleraque foeda memo- 
rari; ceterum regendis provinces prisca virtute egit’ (Ann. 6, 32). The same 
historian’s cool treatment of the virtuous Emperor Galba will not escape notice 
(Hist. 1, 49)—‘magis extra vitia quam cum virtutibus’. 



io6 THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

secured for Brutus and Cassius (who were praetors) a dispensa¬ 
tion to remain away from Rome. He spoke the language of 
conciliation, 1 and it was long before he abandoned it. On his lips 
the profession of respect for Brutus was something more than 
a conventional or politic formula—Antonins was never accused 
of dissimulation: the Caesarian leader was later to be taunted 
with inconsistency on this point. 2 It would not be paradoxical 
to assert that Antonius felt respect and understanding for Brutus, 
a Roman noble embodying the virtues of his order and class, and 
bound to him by ties of personal friendship. 3 He had no quarrel 
with the Liberators providing they did not interfere with the 
first object of his ambition, which was to seize and maintain 
primacy in the Caesarian party. No doubt Antonius desired 
them to be away from Rome: a temporary absence at least might 
have been admitted by the friends of Brutus, to salvage poli¬ 
tical concord and public order. The Liberators were certainly a 
problem; yet Antonius was amicable, not exploiting his position 
unduly. 

In these April days fortune seemed to smile upon the Roman 
State and upon Antonius. It had been feared that the assassina¬ 
tion of Caesar would have wide and ruinous repercussions outside 
Rome, provoking a native rising in Gaul—or else the legions 
might invade Italy to avenge the I mper a tor. Unable to restrain 
his grief, Caesar’s faithful friend Matius took a grim pleasure in 
the most gloomy reports; 4 some, like Balbus and Oppius, dis¬ 
sembled; others again were frankly willing to make the best of 
the new dispensation. 

Gaul and the armies remained tranquil, the danger of popular 
outbreaks was averted, the veterans were kept in hand. Property 
and vested interests seemed secure from revolution or from re¬ 
action. 5 To be sure, the tyrant was slain, but the tyranny sur¬ 
vived—hence open dismay among the friends of the Liberators 
and many a secret muttering at the failure of the coup d'etat. 
Yet some could find the Ides of March a great comfort; and the 

1 Ad Att. 14, 6, 1 (April 12th): ‘Antoni colloquium cum heroibus nostris pro re 
nata non incommodum’; 14, 8, 1 (April 15th): ‘optime iam etiam Bruto nostro 
probari Antonium.’ 

2 Phil. 1, 6; 2, 5. 

3 This is strongly emphasized by Gelzer, P-W x, 1003 f. 

4 Ad Att. 14, 1, 1, cf. 14, 2, 3: ‘habes igitur <j>a\dKp(opa inimicissimum oti, id 
est Bruti.’ 

5 Hence Cicero’s indignation that under the pretext of concord Caesarian parti¬ 
sans should retain their acquisitions—'pads isti scilicet amatores et non latrocini 
auctores’ (Ad Att . 14, 10.. 2). 





THE CONSUL ANTONI US 107 

Roman State had much to be thankful for, as partisan testimony 
was prepared to concede—at a later date and for abusive com¬ 
parisons. 1 

The consul was firm but conciliatory, taking counsel with 
senior statesmen and deferential to the State. He proposed and 
carried a specious measure—the name of the Dictatorship was 
to be abolished for ever. Thoughtful men reflected that its 
powers could easily be restored one day under another appella¬ 
tion. At the end of March or early in April the Senate allotted 
consular provinces for the following year 2 —probably in accord¬ 
ance with the intentions of Caesar. Dolabella received Syria, 
Antonius Macedonia: with Macedonia went Caesar's Balkan 
army, six of the best of the Roman legions. 

From his possession of the State papers and private fortune 
of the Dictator, duly surrendered by Calpurnia, Antonius had 
ample reserves of patronage. Their employment in the first 
place for his own political interests calls neither for surprise nor 
for excuse. Rumours circulated before long, to be reinforced by 
monstrous allegations when proof or disproof was out of the 
question: in these early months the consul had embezzled a 
treasure of seven hundred million sesterces deposited in the 
Temple of Ops—apparently some kind of fund distinct from the 
official treasury, which was housed in the Temple of Saturn. If 
the mysterious hoard was the Dictator’s war-chest, intended for 
the Balkan and eastern wars, it might be doubted whether much 
was still at Rome for Antonius to take. The character and fate 
of the fund is problematical. 3 The wilder charges of corruption 
and embezzlement are hard to establish or to refute. In October 
Antonius was certainly very far from abounding in ready cash. 
Most of the debatable money must have been expended in the 
purchase of lands for the veterans, in pursuance of the provisions 
of two agrarian laws passed in the consulate of Antonius. 

It is bv no means clear that the behaviour of Antonius went 
beyond the measure of the Roman party-politician. He was 
consul and chief man in the Caesarian faction: power and patron¬ 
age rested in his hands. Antonius restored an exile—but only 

1 Phil. 1,2 ff. Cicero does not mention here, among the ‘Republican’ measures 
of Antonius, the removal from the People of the right of electing the pontifex maxi - 
mm. This looked well. Naturally, it was a piece of political jobbery: Lcpidus was 
chosen. Further, there was an abortive proposal to elect a pair of censors (ib. 2, 
9& f.)—clearly patronage and a means of admitting partisans to the Senate in an 
orderly fashion. 2 As emerges from Ad Att. 14, 9, 3 (April 18th). 

i Below, p. 130. 



108 THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

one, and that not without consulting an eminent adversary of 
that exile; 1 he recognized the seizure of territory by an eastern 
monarch subject to Rome—not that it mattered much; 2 and he 
bestowed Roman citizenship upon the inhabitants of Sicily. 3 
Bribery and forged decrees, of course, it was whispered. But 
Cicero himself hoped to profit, tirelessly urging the interests of 
his friend Attieus in a matter concerning lands in Epirus. 4 On 
the whole, Antonius was distinctly superior to what Rome had 
learned to expect of the politician in power. His year of office 
would have to go far in violence and corruption to equal the first 
consulate of Caesar. 

Nor are there sufficient grounds for the partial and exaggerated 
view that posterity has been tempted to take of the ulterior 
ambitions of Antonius. In the light of his subsequent Caesarian 
policy and final contest for the dominion of the world, it was 
easy to pretend that Antonius strove from the beginning to set 
himself in the place of the Dictator and succeed to sole and 
supreme power at Rome—as though the fate of Caesar were not 
a warning. Moreover, Antonius may have lacked the taste, and 
perhaps the faculty, for long designs: the earlier months of his 
guidance of Roman politics do not provide convincing evidence. 
From his career and station, from the authority of the office he 
held, the predominance of Antonius was a given and inescapable 
fact. Certain of his acts that lend colour to the charge of tyranny 
may be defended by the wide discretionary powers which the 
constitution vested in the consulate in times of crisis and by the 
need to safeguard his position and his person, especially when 
attacked, later in the year, by his enemies in a manner which on 
any theory of legality can only be branded as high treason. 

So far the plea for Antonius. Security and aggression are 
terms of partisan interpretation. Though Antonius may not have 
desired to set himself in Caesar’s place, he is not thereby absolved 
from ambition, considered or reckless, and the lust for power. 
There were surely alternatives to Caesar’s autocracy. Chance 
and his own resolution had given Antonius the position of van¬ 
tage. At first he seemed harmless: 5 before long, he was seen to 

1 Ad Alt. 14, 13a and 13b, Antonius’ letter and Cicero’s reply. The person was 
Sex. Clodius, a henchman of P. Clodius. 

2 lb. 14, 12, 1. Deiotarus, King of Galatia, was Rome’s most important vassal 
in Asia, worth conciliating and hardly to be prevented at this juncture. 

3 lb. 14, 12, 1. Caesar had given them only Latin rights. 

4 lb. 14, 12, 1, &c. 

5 lb. 14, 3, 2 ( c. April 8th): ‘sed quid haec ad nos? odorare tamen Antoni Sidflccnv; 



in- 

THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 109 

be a resourceful politician, presenting a double front, both 
Caesarian and Republican, and advancing steadily. To what 
end ? Primacy in the Caesarian party was now his: but he might 
have to fight to retain it. More than that, Antonius was consul, 
head of the government, and so unassailable by legal weapons. 
In the next year, with A. Iiirtius and C. Vibius Pansa as consuls, 
Antonius would have his province of Macedonia. But the pro- 
consul was vulnerable if a faction seized power in Rome and 
sought to pay back old scores. In 42 B.e. D. Brutus would be 
consul along with the diplomatic and unreliable L. Munatius 
Plancus. For self-preservation, Antonius must build up support 
for the settlement of March 17th and the legislation passed in his 
consulate. For the sake of peace, the predominance of Antonius 
might have to be admitted by neutrals —even by Republicans. 

As for the Caesarian party, there were rivals here and 
potential adversaries. Antonius had been no friend of Dolabella 
in the last three years: yet he condoned and recognized Dola- 
bella’s usurpation of the consulate. But Dolabella, an unscrupu¬ 
lous and ambitious young man, would still have to be watched. 
To Lepidus Antonius secured the office of pontijex maximus , 
once held by a glorious and remembered ancestor; 1 he also sought 
to attach that ambiguous person by betrothing his daughter to 
Lepidus* son. Moreover, Antonius could induce him to depart 
to his province. Lepidus, through his family connexion with 
Brutus, might prove a bond of alliance between the Caesarians 
and the Liberators; and not Lepidus only—there was P. Ser- 
vilius his brother-in-law, soon to return from the governorship 
of Asia. 2 

The alternative to the primacy of Antonius during his con¬ 
sulate w T as the free working of Republican institutions. An 
innovation indeed: it had seldom, if ever, existed in the pre¬ 
ceding twenty years. The revival of Libert as in a period of crisis 
would mean the strife of faction, veiled at first under honourable 
names and confined for a time to the scramble for honours and 
emolument, to break out at the last into civil war again. Deplored 
by the Liberators, the lack of leaders in the Senate was a strong 
factor for concord. The surviving consulars kept quiet. The fate 

quern quidem ego epularum niagis arbitror rationem habere quam quicquam 
mali cogitarc.’ The convivial habits of Antonius and his parade of the grand 
and guileless manner deceived some of his contemporaries and almost all posterity 
into a false estimate of his political capacity. Wc are left with slander or romantic 
biography. 

1 Cf. Cicero, Phil. 13, 15. 


z Below, p. 136. 



IIO 


THE CONSUL ANTONIUS 

that bore down the heads of the nobilitas , the fierce but incon¬ 
stant Marcelli, the stubborn Ahenobarbus, the proud and tortuous 
Ap. Claudius, was yet merciful to the Roman People, for it sup¬ 
pressed along with the principes a source of intrigue and feuds. 
Pompeius they might have tolerated for a time, or even Caesar, 
but not Antonius and young Dolabella, still less the respectable 
nonentities designated as consuls for the next year. Cato too was 
dead. Averse from compromise and firm on principle, he would 
have been a nuisance to any government: not less so, but for 
different reasons, the Caesarian young men Curio and Caelius, 
had they survived for so long the inevitable doom of brilliant 
talents and restless ambition. 

Jn April Antonius seemed reasonably secure. At home the 
one menace was assassination. Republicans who cursed the 
melancholy incompleteness of the glorious Ides of March could 
not justly complain if the Caesarian consul solicited the favour or 
enlisted the services of the veterans in the cause of public order. 
As for the provinces, D. Brutus held Gallia Cisalpina for the rest 
of the year, a territory rich in resources and recruits and lying 
athwart the communications to Gaul and Spain. Antonius was 
ready to parry that danger—he would take that region for his own 
consular province and with it an army adequate to defy any enter¬ 
prises of his enemies. Late in March he had received Macedonia. 
Before the end of April, however, it was known that Antonius 
intended to propose on June ist to take another province in 
exchange for Macedonia, namely Gallia Cisalpina, and Gallia 
Comata as well (the region recently conquered by Caesar): 1 these 
lands he would garrison with the Macedonian legions. For how 
long, no indication. For the present, the other provinces of the 
West were a counterbalance to D. Brutus. 2 They were in the 
charge of Caesarians: Plancus took Gallia Comata, while Lepidus 
had already gone off to his command of the two provinces of 
Gallia Narbonensis and Hispania Citerior. C. Asinius Pollio was 
in Hispania Ulterior. 

Nor was this all. The trusty and experienced Caesarian par¬ 
tisans P. Vatinius and T. Sextius were in command of the armies 
of Illyricum and of Africa, three legions each. 3 Q. Ilortensius, 

1 Ad Alt. 14, 14, 4. 

2 For details about all the provinces at this time, cf. W. Sternkopf, Hermes xlvii 
(1912), 321 tf.; W. W. IIow, Cicero , Select Letters 11 (1926), App. ix, 546 ff. 

3 Caesar had divided Africa. Sextius’ province wa^ Africa Nova, where he 
succeeded Sallustius. Q. Cornificius held Africa Vetus, without legions; his pre¬ 
decessor had been C. Calvisius Sabinus. 



THE CONSUL ANTONIUS m 

the proconsul of Macedonia, was a Caesarian but also a kinsman 
of Brutus, hence a potential danger. But that province was soon to 
be stripped of its legions. As for the East, Trebonius and Cimber 
might have Asia and Bithynia: the only armies east of Macedonia 
were the six legions under the Caesarian generals beleaguering 
Apamea (L. Staius Murcus and Q. Marcius Crispus) 1 and the 
garrison stationed at Alexandria to maintain order in the depen¬ 
dent kingdom of Egypt. 

Nor was trouble likely to come from the other Caesarian 
military men or recent governors of provinces, few of whom 
possessed family influence or talent for intrigue. Even the con¬ 
sular marshals evaded undue prominence, Fufius and Caninius, 
who had been legates pf Caesar in Gaul and elsewhere, and 
Cn. Domitius Calvinus, who had fought in Thessaly, Pontus 
and Africa. There was no public mention of the nobilis P. Sul- 
picius Rufus, while Sallustius reposed upon the satisfaction of 
his recovered dignity and the profits of a proconsulate. Sex. 
Peducaeus and A. Allienus carried no weight; and only another 
war would bring rapid distinction to Carrinas, Calvisius and 
Nonius Asprenas. 

Under these auspices Antonius departed from Rome (about 
April 2ist) and made his way to Campania. The veterans of 
Caesar had to be attended to, with urgent and just claims not to 
be disregarded, as the Liberators themselves were well aware. 
Antonius occupied himself with the allotment of lands and the 
founding of military colonies. He was absent for a month. 
Various intrigues were devised against him but came to nothing. 
When he returned, it was to discover with dismay that a new and 
incalculable factor had impinged upon Roman politics. 

1 The situation in Syria is very obscure. The quaestor C. Antistius Vetus was still 
apparently in charge at the end of 45 b.c. (AdAtt. 14, 9, 3). L. Staius Murcus being 
sent out as proconsul in 44, cf. Miinzer, P-W in a, 2137. Crispus, proconsul of 
Bithynia in 45, took away with him his army of three legions to be used against 
Bassus, P-W xiv, 1556. 



VIII. CAESAR’S HEIR 


B Y the terms of his will Caesar appointed as heir to his name 
and fortune a certain C. Octavius, the grandson of one of his 
sisters. On the paternal side the youth came of a respectable 
family that lacked nobility: his grandfather, a rich banker estab¬ 
lished at the small town of Velitrae, had shunned the burdens and 
the dangers of Roman politics. 1 

Ambition broke out in the son, a model of all the virtues. 2 
Me married Atia, the daughter of M. Atius Balbus, a senator 
from the neighbouring town of Aricia, and of Julia, Caesar’s 
sister. 3 Hence rapid advancement and honours, the praetorship, 
the governorship of Macedonia, and the sure prospect of a con¬ 
sulate. 4 Death frustrated his intended candidature, but the 
Caesarian alliance maintained the fortunes of the family. The 
widow Atia was at once transferred in matrimony to L. Marcius 
Philippics, a safe candidate for the consulate of 56 b.c. Octavius 
left three children, an Octavia by his first wife, by Atia another 
Octavia and a son, C. Octavius. Of the two children of Atia, 
the daughter was subsequently married to C. Marcellus (cos. 
50 B.c.) ; the son, in any event assured of a brilliant career through 
these influential connexions, was taken up by Caesar. 5 

When C. Octavius passed by adoption into the Julian House 
he acquired the new and legal designation of C. Julius Caesar 
Octavianus. It will be understood that the aspirant to Caesar’s 
power preferred to drop the name that betrayed his origin, and 
be styled ‘C. Julius Caesar’. Further, the official deification of 
his adoptive parent soon provided the title of ‘Divi Julii Alius’; 
and from 38 b.c. onwards the military leader of the Caesarian 

1 On the family, see above all Suetonius, Divus Aug. i ff., presenting authentic 
facts, hostile slander—and irrelevant information about the senatorial gens Octavia. 
Augustus in his Autobiography saw no occasion to misrepresent the truth in this 
matter—‘ipse Augustus nihil amplius quam equestri familia ortum se scribit vetere 
ac locuplete, et in qua primus senator pater suus fuent’ (ib. 2, 3). For a tessera of his 
grandfather the banker, see Munzer, Hermes lxxi (193b), 222 ff. 

2 As Velleius happily says (2, 59, 2), ‘gravis sanctus innocens dives’. 

3 For these relationships, see Table III at end. Balbus himself, on the maternal 
side, was a near relative of Pompeius (Suetonius, Divus Aug. 4, 1). 

4 Cicero, Phil. 3, 15. 

5 The young Octavius, in Spain for a time with Caesar in 45 B.c., was enrolled 
among the patricians; and Caesar drew up his will, naming the heir, on September 
13th (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 83, 1). 



CAESAR’S HEIR 113 

faction took to calling himself ‘Imperator Caesar ’. 1 After the 
first constitutional settlement and the assumption of the name 
‘Augustus’, the titulature of the ruler was conceived as ‘Impera¬ 
tor Caesar Divi filius Augustus’. Posterity was to know him as 
‘Divus Augustus’. In the early and revolutionary years the heir 
of Caesar never, it is true, referred to himself as ‘Octavianus’; 
the use of that name, possessing the sanction of literary tradition, 
will here be maintained, though it is dubious and misleading. 
As his enemies bitterly observed, the name of Caesar was the 
young man’s fortune . 2 Italy and the world accepted him as 
Caesar’s son and heir; that the relationship by blood was distant 
was a fact of little moment in the Roman conception of the 
family, barely known or soon forgotten by the inhabitants of 
the provinces. 

The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives 
an estimate of the character and personality of the principal 
agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times—it either 
imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or 
condemnation on moral and emotional grounds. All conventions 
are baffled and defied by Caesar’s heir. Not for nothing that the 
ruler of Rome made use of a signet-ring with a sphinx engraved. 
The revolutionary adventurer eludes grasp and definition no 
less than the mature statesman. For the early years, a sore lack 
everywhere of personal, authentic and contemporary testimony, 
a perpetual hazard in estimating the change and development 
between youth and middle age. 

The personality of Octavianus will best be left to emerge 
from his actions. One thing at least is clear. From the beginning, 
his sense for realities was unerring, his ambition implacable. 
In that the young man was a Roman and a Roman aristocrat. 
He was only eighteen years of age: but he resolved to acquire 
the power and the glory along with the name of Caesar. Whether 
his insistence that Caesar be avenged and the murderers pun¬ 
ished derives more from horror of the deed, traditional sense 
of the solidarity of the family, or resentment at the thwarting 
of his own legitimate aspirations is a question that concerns the 
ultimate nature of human character and the deepest springs of 
human action. 

1 Perhaps from 40 b.c. The earliest clear and contemporary evidence for the 
pravnomen comes from coins of Agrippa, struck in Caul in 3H B.c., fiA/O, R. Rtp 

n , 411 tr. 

2 Antonius’ own words are quoted by Cicero, Phi!. 13, 24: ‘et te, o puer, qui 
omnia nomini debesA 



11 4 CAESAR’S HEIR 

Exorbitant ambition mated with political maturity is not 
enough to explain the ascension of Octavianus. A sceptic about 
all else, Caesar the Dictator had faith in his own star. The 
fortune of Caesar survived his fall. On no rational forecast of 
events would his adopted son have succeeded in playing off the 
Republican cause against the Caesarian leaders, survived the 
War of Perusia and lived to prevail over Antonius in the end. 

The news of the Ides of March found the young man at 
Apollonia, a town on the coast of Albania, occupied in the study 
of oratory and the practice of military exercises, for he was to 
accompany the Dictator on the Balkan and eastern campaigns. 
He was not slow in reaching a decision. Crossing the Adriatic, 
he landed near Brundisium. When he learned about the will, 
he conceived high hopes, refusing to be deterred by letters from 
his mother and step-father, both of whom counselled refusal of 
the perilous inheritance. But he kept his head, neither dazzled 
by good fortune nor spurred to rash activity—the appeal to the 
troops, which certain friends counselled, was wisely postponed. 
Nor would he enter Rome until he had got into touch with 
persons of influence and had surveyed the political situation. 
By the middle of April his presence was signalled in Campania, 
where he was staying with his step-father, the consular Philippus . 1 
More important, he had met Balbus, the trusted confidant and 
secretary of the Dictator . 2 Other prominent members of the 
Caesarian faction were approached: Hirtius and Pansa were 
certainly in the neighbourhood . 3 

But the youth was too astute to confine his attentions to one 
party. Cicero was living at Cumae at this time. He had heard 
rumours about Octavianus, according them scant attention . 4 
Which member of Caesar’s family inherited the remnant of 
his private fortune mattered little—for the power rested with 
the leaders of the Caesarian party. Foreseeing trouble with 
Antonius about the disposal of the Dictator’s property, however, 
he must have rejoiced in secret . 5 Then Octavianus called on 
Cicero. The illustrious orator was flattered: ‘he is quite devoted 
to me’, he wrote . 6 

The ground was prepared. Early in May, Octavianus drew 
near the city. As he entered Rome, a halo was seen to encircle 

1 Ad Att. 14, 10, 3; 11, 2. 2 lb. 14, io, 3. 

3 lb. 14, 11, 2. 

4 lb. 14, 5, 3; 6, 1: ‘nam de Octavio susque deque.* 

5 lb. 14, 10, 3. 

6 lb. 14, 11, 2 (April 21st): ‘mihi totus deditus.’ 



CAESAR’S HEIR u 5 

the sun, a portent of royalty. Octavianus without delay an¬ 
nounced that he accepted the adoption and persuaded a tribune, 
L. Antonius, the brother of the consul, to allow him to address 
the People. By the middle of the month, the consul himself 
was back in Rome. An unfriendly interview followed. Octavia¬ 
nus claimed the ready money from the inheritance of Caesar 
to pay the legacies. Antonius answered with excuses and delays. 1 

The Caesarian leader had left this competitor out of account. 
His primacy depended upon a delicate equilibrium between the 
support of the Caesarian interests, especially plebs and veterans, 
and the acquiescence of the Senate. A move to one side would 
alienate the other. Hitherto Antonius had neglected the aven¬ 
ging of Caesar and prevented his cult; he had professed concilia¬ 
tion towards the assassins, with impunity. The disloyal Caesarian 
was soon to be brought to book. To maintain power with the 
populace and the veterans, Antonius was forced into a policy that 
alarmed the Senate and gave his enemies a pretext for action. 
Thus he was to find himself attacked on two fronts, by a radical 
demagogue and by respected conservatives. 

For the moment, however, Caesar’s heir was merely a nuisance, 
not a factor of much influence upon the policy of Antonius. 
The consul had already decided to take for himself a special 
provincial command. Further, alarmed by the intrigues current 
during his absence in Campania, he now made up his mind 
that Brutus and Cassius should leave Italy. Antonius had re¬ 
turned to Rome with an escort of veterans, much to the disquiet 
of the Liberators, who wrote to him in vain protestation. 2 Hirtius 
too was displeased. 3 The meeting of the Senate on June ist 
was sparsely attended. But Antonius chose to get his command 
from the People. The tenure of the consular provinces, Syria 
and Macedonia, which had been assigned to Dolabella and 
Antonius some two months earlier, was now prolonged until 
the end of 39 B.c. But Antonius proposed to exchange provinces, 
to give up Macedonia, while retaining the Balkan army, and 
receive as his consular province Gallia Cisalpina and Gallia 
Comata as well. Such was the Lex de permulatione provinciarum 
(June 1st). 4 This manoeuvre might well alarm the moderates 

1 He objected that a lex curiata ratifying the adoption had not yet been passed 
(cf. esp. Dio 45, 5, 3; Appian, BC 3, 14, 48 fF.). This was a mere formality. 

2 Ad fam. 11,2. 

3 Ad Att. 15, 8, 1. But Hirtius was by no means favourable to the Liberators, 
ib. 14, 6, 1 ff. 

4 On this, W. Sternkopf, Hermes xlvii (1912), 357 ff., accepted by T. Rice 



116 CAESAR’S IIEIR 

as well as extreme Republicans. They knew what the last ex¬ 
tended command in Gaul had meant. 

Two other measures of a Caesarian and popular character 
were passed, a law permitting all ex-centurions, whether of the 
standing of Roman knights or not, to serve on juries, and another 
agrarian bill, of fairly wide terms of reference. More patronage: 
L. Antonius the tribune was to be president of a board of seven 
commissioners. They were chosen, as was traditional at Rome, 
from partisans. 1 

The Liberators remained, an anomalous factor. On June 5th, 
at the instigation of Antonius, the Senate appointed Brutus and 
Cassius to an extraordinary commission for the rest of the year: 
they were to superintend the collection of corn in the provinces 
of Sicily and Asia. Complimentary in appearance, the post was 
really an honourable pretext for exile. Brutus and Cassius were 
in doubts whether to accept. A family conference at Antium, 
presided over by Servilia, debated the question. 2 Cassius was 
resentful and truculent, Brutus undecided. Servilia promised 
her influence to get the measure revoked. No other decision 
was taken. For the present, the Liberators remained in Italy, 
waiting on events. 

Octavianus, in the meantime, acquired a mastery of the dema¬ 
gogic arts that must have reinforced his native distrust and 
Roman scorn for the mob. The enterprises of Herophilus had 
shown what dominance the memory of Caesar retained over the 
populace. The heir of Caesar at onee devoted himself to Cae¬ 
sarian propaganda. Games and festivals were customary devices 
for the organization of popular sentiment. Already, at the 
Ludi Ceriales, Octavianus had made an attempt to display in 
public the golden chair voted to the Dictator by the Senate and 
the diadem vainly offered by Antonius at the classic scene of the 
Lupercalia . 3 He was promptly thwarted by a Republican—or 


Holmes, The Architect of the Roman Empire 1 (1928), 192 ff. Even if June 1st be not 
the day of the passing of the law (cf. M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capopartv I (1933), 76 ff.), 
it matters little. 

1 Namely, the two consuls, the tribune L. Antonius, the dramatic writer Nucula, 
Caescnnius Lento, and two others—possibly Deeidius Saxa and Cafo, Phil. 8, 26, 
cf. JfRS xxvii (1937). 135 f- 

2 Ad Att. 15, 11 (June 8th). The wives of Brutus and Cassius were there, also 
the faithful Favonius and Cicero, who was mercilessly snubbed by Servilia when he 
embarked upon an all too familiar recital of lost opportunities. 

3 The Ludi Cerialcs had apparently been postponed from the end of April to the 
middle of May, cf. Rice Holmes, The Architect of the Roman Empire 1 (1928), 
191, on Ad Att. 15, 3, a (May 22nd). 



CAESAR’S HEIR 117 

Antonian—tribune; then, waiting for a better opportunity, he 
derived encouragement from the absence of any Republican 
manifestations of note during the Ludi Apollinares , celebrated 
in the name and at the expense of Brutus, the urban praetor, 
on July 7th. At last his chance arrived. Certain friends of Caesar 
supplied abundant funds, 1 which along with his own money he 
expended lavishly at the Ludi Victoriae Caesar is, in honour of 
the triumph of Caesars arms and of Venus Gcnetrix, the ances¬ 
tress of the Julian house (July 20th to 30th). 

Octavianus again sought to exhibit the Caesarian emblems. 
When Antonius intervened, the sympathies of plebs and veterans 
went to Caesar’s heir. And now Heaven itself took a hand. At 
the eighth hour of the day a comet appeared in the northern 
sky. The superstitious mob acclaimed the soul of Caesar made 
a god. Octavianus accepted the sign with secret confidence in 
his destiny—and with public exploitation. 2 He caused a star to 
be placed upon the head of statues of Caesar. 

Hence a new complication in Roman politics towards the end 
of July. The recrudescence of public disorder and the emergence 
of a Caesarian rival might well force Antonius back again to the 
policy which he had deserted by the legislation of June 1st—to 
a strengthening of the coalition of March 17th, and, more than 
that, to a firm pact with the Liberators. Brutus and Cassius 
published an edict conceived in fair terms, probably with honest 
intent, not merely to deceive; about the same time, Antonius 
delivered a speech before the People, friendly and favourable to 
the Liberators. 3 

So much in public. What happened next is obscure. The 
enemies of Antonius, taking new courage, may have gone too 
far. It was known before the event that there would be criticism 
of the consul at the meeting of the Senate announced for August 
1st; it may also have been known who was to take the lead, 
namely the respected consular L. Calpurnius Piso. The balance 
in politics seemed to be turning against Antonius: he would 
have to make a choice. Sanguine informants from Rome reported 
at Rhegium an expectation that Antonius might surrender his 
provincial command, that Brutus and Cassius would be able to 
return to Roman political life. 4 

1 Ad Att. 15, 2, 3, below, p. 131. 

2 Pliny, NH 2, 94 (deriving from the Autobiography ): ‘haec ille in publicum; 

interiore gaudio sibi ilium natum seque in eo nasci interpretatus est, et si verum 
fatemur, salutare id terris fuit.’ 3 Phil. 1, 8, cf. Ad Att. 16, 7, 1. 

4 So Cicero was informed at Leucopetra, near Rhegium, on or soon after August 



118 CAESAR’S HEIR 

These hopes were shattered at a blow. The prospect of a 
split between the Caesarian leader and Caesar's heir was dis¬ 
tasteful to the sentiments of soldiers and officers, ruinous to their 
interests. Remonstrance was addressed to Antonius: the military 
men urged him to treat Caesar’s heir with loyalty and respect. 
Yielding to this moral suasion, Antonius agreed to a formal and 
public reconciliation with Octavianus. The ceremony was staged 
on the Capitol. 

In revenge for the Ides of March, Caesar’s ghost, as all men 
know, drove Brutus to his doom on the field of Philippi. The 
same phantom bore heavily on Antonius and stayed the hand he 
would have raised against Caesar’s heir. The word of the veter¬ 
ans silenced the Senate of Rome. When L. Piso spoke, at the 
session of August ist, there was no man to support him. Of the 
tone and content of Piso’s proposal there is no evidence: perhaps 
he suggested that Cisalpine Gaul should cease to be a province 
at the end of the year and be added to Italy. That would preclude 
competition for a post of vantage and armed domination. A 
fair prospect of concord—or a subtle intrigue against the consul 
— had been brought to nought. 

Antonius, for his part, had been constrained to an unwelcome 
decision. In no mood to be thwarted in his ambitions, he still 
hoped to avoid an open breach with the party of Brutus and 
Cassius. His professions, both public and private, had hitherto 
been couched in a vein of conciliation; his recent speech was 
held to be distinctly amicable. 1 To their edict he now made 
reply with a public proclamation and a private letter, in a tone 
of some anger and impatience. 2 Brutus and Cassius retorted 

6th, Ad Alt. 16, 7, i (August inth): ‘have adfcrebanl, cdictum Rruti ct Cassi, et 
fore frequentem senatum Kalendis, a Bruto et Cassio litteras missas ad consularis 
et praetorios ut adessent rogare. summarn spem nuntiabant fore ut Antonius 
cederet, res conveniret, nostri Romani redirent.’ Compare the parallel passage, 
Phil, i, 8: ‘rem eonventuram: Kalendis Sextilibus senatum frequentem fore.’ 
Most standard texts since Madvig choose to omit the word ‘Sextilibus’—wrongly. 
But even so, the date meant by Cicero is quite certain. 

1 Phil. i,8: ‘M. Antoni contionem, quae mihi ita placuit ut ea lecta de reversione 
primum eoepernn cogitare.’ So at least on the surface, which is all that we know. 
Yet Antonius may have spoken as he did in order to force his enemies to come out 
into the open. Nor was it likely that he would consent to surrender his command, 
hardly even a part of it, the Cisalpina, which may have been Piso’s proposal (cf. 
Appian, BC 3, 30, 115). It must be repeated that the only clear account of the 
speeches and negotiations leading up to the session of August ist is Cicero’s report 
of what was told him when he was absent from Rome. In Cicero, however, no 
mention of the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris , which revealed the Caesarian sentiments 
of the mob and the popularity of Caesar’s heir. 

2 Ad Jam. 11, 3, 1 ; Ad. Att. 16, 7, 7. 



CAESAR’S HEIR 119 

with a firm manifesto (August 4th), taking their stand upon 
their principles and their personal honour: they told Antonius 
that they valued their own libcrtas more than his amicitia and 
bade him take warning from the fate of Caesar. 1 

Of any immediate intentions the Liberators said no word in 
their edict. But they now prepared to depart from Italy. They 
had hesitated to take over the corn-commission voted on June 
5th. Now, early in August, Antonius induced the Senate to 
grant them the harmless provinces of Crete and Cyrene. Brutus 
left Italy towards the end of the month, not before publishing 
a last edict. He affirmed the loyalty of the Liberators towards 
the Roman constitution, their reluctance to provide a cause of 
civil war—and their proud conviction that wherever they were, 
there stood Rome and the Republic. 2 Cassius, however, lingered 
in Italian waters for some time. 

As for Antonius, pressure from a competitor was now begin¬ 
ning to force him to choose at last between the Senate and the 
veterans. The Senate was hostile: yet the uneasy reconciliation 
with Octavianus could scarcely last. On any count, the outlook 
w r as black for the friends of settled government. Octavianus did 
not belong to that class. 

The rhetoric of the ancients and the parliamentary theories of 
the moderns sometimes obscure the nature and sources of politi¬ 
cal power at Rome. They were patent to contemporaries. For 
the ambitious Octavianus, the gradual advancement of a Roman 
noble through the consecrated order of magistracies to the con¬ 
sulate, the command of an army, the auctoritcis of a senior 
statesman, all that w r as too long and too slow. He would have 
to wait until middle age: his laurels would repose on grey hairs 
or none remaining. Legitimate primacy, it is true, could only 
be attained at Rome through many extra-constitutional resources, 
bribery, intrigue, and even violence; for the short and perilous 
path that Octavianus intended to tread, such resources would 
have to be doubled and redoubled. 

Octavianus was resolute. He had a cause to champion, the 
avenging of Caesar, and was ready to exploit every advantage. 
In the first place, the urban plebs, fanatically devoted to the 
memory of Caesar and susceptible to the youth,the dignified bear¬ 
ing, the demagogy and the bribes of Caesar’s heir. With what 
consummate art he worked upon this material in the month of 

1 Ad fam. 11,3 (August 4th). 

2 Velleius 2, 62, 3; echoes in Cicero, Phil. 2. 113 ; 10, 8. 



120 


CAESAR’S HEIR 

July has already been narrated. He might invoke the tribunate, 
emulating the Gracchi and a long line of demagogues. Rumours 
went about in the July days at Rome that Octavianus, though a 
patrician, had designs upon this office. 1 Nothing came of it for 
the moment: at need, he would always be able to purchase one 
or other of the ten members of the tribunician college. 

More costly but more remunerative as an investment were 
the soldiers of Caesar, active in the legions or settled in the 
military colonies of Italy. While at Apollonia, Octavianus made 
himself known to the soldiers and officers of Caesar's great 
army of the Balkans. They did not forget him, nor did he 
neglect opportunities on his journey from Brundisium to Rome. 
As the months passed, the Caesarian sentiments of the legionaries 
were steadily reinforced—and their appetites whetted by the 
dissemination of propaganda, of promises, of bribes. 

With his years, his name and his ambition, Octavianus had 
nothing to gain from concord in the State, everything from 
disorder. Supported by the plebs and the veterans, he possessed 
the means to split the Caesarian party. For his first designs he 
needed funds and a faction. As many of the most eminent of 
the Caesarians already held office and preferment, were loyal 
to Antonius or to settled government, he must turn his hopes 
and his efforts towards the more obscure of the Caesarian novi 
homines in the Senate, or, failing them, to knights, to financiers 
and to individuals commanding influence in the towns of Italy. 
Once a compact and devoted following was won, and his power 
revealed, he could build up a new Caesarian party of his own. 

It was the aim of Octavianus to seduce the moderate Caesarians 
by an appeal to their loyalty towards the memory of the Dictator, 
to their apprehensions or envy of Antonius: through them he 
might hope to influence neutral or Republican elements. The 
supreme art of politics is patent—to rob adversaries of their 
adherents and soldiers, their programme and their catchwords. 
If the process goes far enough, a faction may grow into something 
like a national party. So it was to be in the end. But this was 
no time for an ideal and patriotic appeal. 

Such were the resources that Octavianus gathered in late 
summer and autumn of the year. Men and money were the 
first thing, next the skill and the resolution to use them. An 

1 Date and circumstances are vague, various and inconsistent in the ancient 
authorities (Appian, BC 3, 31, 120; Plutarch, Antonius 16; Suetonius, Divus Aug . 
10, 2; Dio 45, 6, 2 f.). 



CAESAR’S HEIR 121 

inborn and Roman distrust of theory, an acute sense of the 
difference between words and facts, a brief acquaintance with 
Roman political behaviour—that he possessed and that was all 
he needed. It is a common belief, attested by the existence of 
political science as a subject of academic study, that the arts of 
government may be learned from books. The revolutionary 
career of Caesars heir reveals never a trace of theoretical preoc¬ 
cupations: if it did, it would have been very different and very 
short. 

Lessons might indeed be learned, but from men and affairs, from 
predecessors and rivals, from the immediate and still tangible 
past. The young Pompeius had grasped at once the technique 
of raising a private army, securing official recognition—and 
betraying his allies. Caesar, more consistent in his politics, had 
to wait longer for distinction and power. The sentiments which 
the young man entertained towards his adoptive parent were 
never revealed. The whole career of the Dictator, however, 
showed the fabulous harvest to be got soon or late from the culti¬ 
vation of the plebs and the soldiers. Not less the need for 
faithful friends and a coherent party. For lack of that, the great 
Pompeius had been forced at the last into a fatal alliance with 
his enemies the oligarchs. Caesar had been saved because he had 
a party behind him. It was clear that many a man followed 
Caesar in an impious war from personal friendship, not political 
principle. The devotion which Caesar’s memory evoked among 
his friends was attested by impressive examples; 1 and it was not 
merely from lust of adventure or of gain that certain intimate 
friends of the dead autocrat at once lent their support and 
devotion to his son and heir. Loyalty could only be won by 
loyalty in return. Caesar never let down a friend, whatever his 
character and station. Antonius imitated his leader—which came 
easy to his open nature: Octavianus also, though less easily per¬ 
haps. Only two of his associates, so it was recorded, were ever 
thrown over, and that was for treachery. 2 

Next to magnanimity, courage. By nature, the young man 

1 For example Pollio, Ad jam. 10, 31, 2 f., quoted above, p. 6. C. Matius made 
a firm and noble reply to a peevish letter of Cicero, ib. n, 28, 2: ‘vitio mihi dant 
quod mortem hominis necessarii graviter fero atque cum quem dilexi perisse 
indignor; aiunt enim patriam amicitiae praeponendam esse, proinde ac si iam 
vicerint obitum eius rei p. fuisse utilem. sed non agam astute; fateor me ad istum 
gradum sapientiae non pervenisse; neque enim Caesarem in dissensione civili sum 
secutus sed amicum.’ 

2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66, 1 (Salvidienus and Gallus only, perhaps an under¬ 
statement). 



122 


CAESAR’S HEIR 

was cool and circumspect: he knew that personal courage was 
often but another name for rashness. But the times called for 
daring and the example of Caesar taught him to run risks gaily, 
to insist upon his prestige, his honour, the rights due to his 
name and station. But not to excess: Octavianus took a firm 
stand upon dignitas without dangerous indulgence in chivalry 
or clemency; he perfected himself in the study of political cant 
and the practice of a dissimulation that had been alien to 
the splendid and patrician nature of Caesar. He soon took the 
measure of Antonius: the Caesarian soldier was a warning against 
the more generous virtues and vices. Another eminent Roman 
could furnish a text in the school of politics. The failure of 
Cicero as a statesman showed the need for courage and constancy 
in all the paths of duplicity. A change of front in politics is 
not disastrous unless caused by delusion or indecision. The 
treacheries of Octavianus were conscious and consistent. 

To assert himself against Antonius, the young revolutionary 
needed an army in the first place, after that, Republican allies 
and constitutional backing, lie would then have to postpone the 
avenging of Caesar until he was strong enough, built up by 
Republican help, to betray the Republicans. The calculation 
was hazardous but not hopeless—on the other side, certain 
moderates and Republicans might be lured and captured by 
the genial idea of employing the name of Caesar and the arms 
of Octavianus to subvert the domination of Antonius, and so 
destroy the Caesarian party, first Antonius, then Octavianus. 
But before such respectable elements could venture openly to 
advocate sedition, violence and civil war, Octavianus would have 
to take the lead and act. 1 

1 The whole situation at this time is summed up by Dio (45, 11, 1 ff.) 
with unwonted insight and force: elpijvovv eTi Kal enoAipovv ijSry to re rfjs 
eAevdeplas crxvi la k(f>avTa£cTo Ka ' L T( I r V'> SuratrTeias 1 epya eyiyvero. The motives 
of the politicians who supported Octavianus are thus reproduced: e<f>LAovv peu yap 
ovhircpov, vecov 8 e Brj del npaypdriov fmdupoui'Tes, Kal to pew KpeiTTov del nav 
Kadatpelv Tip 8 e me^opevio porjueiv necfrvKOTes, anexpcovTo avTols npos to. o<f>eTepa 
en1dvp.7jp.aTa. TaneividoavTes ovv totc Sia tov Kaicrapos tou * Avtuwiov , eneiTa 
KaKelvuv KaTaAvaac enex^ip^crav (45, 11, 3). Compare also his valuable observa¬ 
tions on the War of Mutina (46, 34, 1 ff.j. 



IX. THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 


AT the beginning of the month of August certain political 
intrigues went wrong, and hopes of concord or of dissension 
w r ere frustrated. Brutus and Cassius did not return to Rome and 
the rival Caesarian leaders were reconciled through the insis¬ 
tence of the soldiery. 

To Antonius, no grounds for satisfaction. Alert and resilient 
among the visible risks of march and battle, he had no talent for 
slow intrigue, no taste for postponed revenge. Though able 
beyond expectation as a politician, he now became bewildered, 
impatient and tactless. His relations with Octavianus did not 
improve. Neither trusted the other. To counter that danger and 
outbid his rival the consul went farther with his Caesarian and 
popular policy. 

In the Senate on September ist Antonius proposed that a day 
in honour of Caesar should be added to the solemn thanksgivings 
paid by the Roman State to the immortal gods; and he had already 
promulgated a bill which provided for an appeal to the citizen 
body in cases of breach of the peace or high treason. This time 
there was criticism and opposition in the Senate—on the follow¬ 
ing day both Cicero and P. Servilius Isauricus spoke. 1 Antonius 
after delay retorted w ith a bitter personal attack (September 19th). 
Cicero was absent. 

Such was the outcome of Cicero's first public appearance since 
March 17th. The Curia did not see him again for more than 
three months. The importance of his speech is difficult to 
estimate: but the stand made by the two consulars, though nega¬ 
tive, irresolute and not followed by action of any kind, was 
certainly a check to Antonius, revealing the insecurity of his 
position. 

The blow was to fall from the other side, from the plebs, from 
the veterans and from Octavianus. In pursuance of his Caesarian 
policy, Antonius caused to be set up in the Forum a statue of 
Caesar with the inscription ‘Parenti optime merito’. 2 His enemies 
let loose upon him a tribune, Ti. Cannutius by name. The 
exacerbated Antonius then delivered a violent speech, with abuse 
of the Liberators. This was on October 2nd. Three or four days 


Cicero, Phil , i ; Ad Jam. 12, 2, 1. 


2 Ad Jam. 12, 3, 1. 



124 THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 

later, a dark episode—Antonius arrested at his house certain of 
the veteran soldiers of his bodyguard, alleging that they had been 
suborned by Octavianus to assassinate him. Octavianus pro¬ 
tested his innocence. The truth of the matter naturally eludes 
inquiry. Antonius did not press the charge—perhaps it was 
nothing more than a clumsy device to discredit the young adver¬ 
sary. Among contemporaries, many enemies of Antonius believed 
in the reality of the attempt and rejoiced 1 —as though it suited the 
plans of Octavianus to rid himself of Antonius in this summary 
and premature fashion. To remove a rival was to remove a 
potential ally. 2 

However it was, Antonius took alarm. Rome was becoming 
untenable. If he lingered until the expiration of his consular 
year, he was lost. His enemies might win the provincial armies. 
Brutus and Cassius had left Italy, ostensibly for their provinces 
of Crete and Cyrenc; of their whereabouts and true intentions 
nothing was known. But late in October disquieting news came 
to Rome through private sources. It was reported that the 
legions at Alexandria in Egypt were riotous, that Cassius was 
expected there. 3 Further, Cassius might appeal to the large 
armies in Syria. It was probably at this point that Dolabella, 
without awaiting the end of his consulate, set out for the East 
to secure the province of Syria. 

Antonius had already acted. There was a nearer danger, D. 
Brutus holding the Cisalpina and cutting off Antonius from the 
precarious support of Lepidus his ally, from the even less de¬ 
pendable Plancus and from the pessimistic Pollio. When Brutus 
entered his province in April he found only two legions there. 
He proceeded to raise several more on his own initiative and 
resources, training them in warfare against Alpine tribes. This 
was serious. Antonius therefore resolved to take over one part 
of his consular province, the Cisalpina, at once. Then Plancus 
would raise no difficulties about Comata. Antonius summoned 
I). Brutus to yield up his command. The threat of force would 
be necessary. Antonius set out for Brundisium on October 9th, 
proposing there to pick up four of the Macedonian legions and 
send them or march with them to northern Italy. 

1 Ad Jam. 12, 23, 2: ‘prudentes autem ct boni viri ct credunt factum ct probant.’ 

2 As Appian justly observes, BC 3, 39, 158. 

3 Ad Aft. 15, 13,4 (Oct. 25th). The informant was Servilia; a slave of Caecilius 
Bassus had brought the news. Further, Scaptius, Brutus’ agent, had arrived at 
Rome. Serv ilia promised to pass on her information to Cicero, who was jubilant— 
‘\idctur enim res publica ius suum recuperatura.’ 



THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 125 

Before he returned, armed revolution had broken out in Italy. 
Octavianus solicited his father’s veterans. A tour in Campania 
was organized. With the young man went five of his intimate 
friends, many soldiers and centurions—and a convoy of wagons 
bearing money and equipment. 1 The appeal worked—he gave 
a bribe of 500 denarii to each soldier, more than twice the annual 
pay of a legionary, promising, in the event of success, no less 
than 5,000 denarii. In the colonies of Calatia and Casilinum 
Octavianus raised quickly some three thousand veterans. The 
new Pompeius now had an army. He was at first quite uncertain 
what to do with it. Was he to stand at Capua and prevent 
Antonius from returning to Rome, to cross the central mountains 
and intercept three of the consul’s legions which were moving 
along the eastern coast of Italy towards Cisalpine Gaul, or to 
march on Rome himself? 2 

Octavianus took the supreme risk and set out for Rome. With 
armed men he occupied the Forum on November 10th. lie had 
hoped for a meeting of the Senate and public support from senior 
statesmen. In vain—his backers were timid or absent. He had 
to be content with the plebs and a tribune. Brought before an 
assembly of the People by Ti. Cannutius, the young man de¬ 
livered a vigorous speech attacking Antonius, praising Caesar and 
asserting upon oath his invincible resolve to win the honours 
and station of his parent. 3 

The coup failed. Antonius was approaching with the Mace¬ 
donian legions. The veterans refused to fight. Many deserted 
and returned to their homes, none the worse for a brief autumnal 
escapade. With weakened forces and despair in his heart, 
Octavianus made his way northwards to try his chances in the 
colonies of Etruria and the region lying towards Ravenna. He 
now established a base at Arretium, the town of one of his 
chief partisans. 4 

At Brundisium angry and seditious troops confronted the 
consul: the leaflets and the bribes of Octavianus were doing their 
work. To restore discipline Antonius ordered summary execu¬ 
tions. Disturbing rumours brought him back to Rome. He 
summoned the Senate to meet on November 24th, intending to 
have Octavianus denounced as a public enemy. The rash youth 
appeared to have played into his hands. Of the legal point, no 
question: Octavianus and his friends were guilty of high treason. 

1 Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 3 t, 131 ff.; Ad Att. 16, 8, 1 f. ; n, 6. 

2 Ad Att . 16, 8, 2. 3 lb. 16, 15, 3. 4 Appian, BC 3, 42, 174 



126 THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 

It would surely be easy to incriminate or to intimidate his secret 
accomplices. Might and right were on the side of the consul. 
But the advantage passed in a moment. The meeting never 
occurred—Antonius on receipt of grave news dashed out to 
Alba Fucens. One of the legions marching up the eastern 
coast of Italy, the legio Martia , declared for Octavianus and 
turned westwards. Antonius confronted the mutineers at Alba 
Fucens. They would listen neither to argument nor to bribes: 
what he offered was miserable in comparison with the lavish 
generosity of Octavianus. 

The consul returned to Rome. On November 28th the Senate 
met by night upon the Capitol. It was later alleged that a consular 
was ready on the side of Antonius with a bill of attainder against 
Octavianus. 1 Nothing came of this—perhaps the situation was 
too serious. Not only his soldiers but his partisans were being 
seduced—a report came that another legion, the Fourth , under 
Antonius’ quaestor L. Egnatuleius, had embraced the revolu¬ 
tionary cause. Had the consul attempted to outlaw Octavianus, 
a tribune wouid surely have vetoed the measure: he could not 
afford a fresh conflict with the Senate and a fresh rebuff. In haste 
Antonius proposed a vote complimentary to his ally Lepidus 
(who had brought Sex. Pompeius to terms) and carried through 
the allotment of praetorian provinces for the following year. 
Crete and Cyrene were taken from Brutus and Cassius, while 
Macedonia was assigned to his brother, the praetor C. Antonius. 

On the following day, after a solemn review at Tibur, where not 
only the troops but a great part of the Senate and many private 
persons swore an oath of allegiance, 2 the consul set out for the 
north to join the remaining legions and occupy Cisalpine Gaul. 
Fresh levies were needed. Octavianus had not carried all Cam¬ 
pania with him: two old Caesarians of military experience, 
Decidius Saxa and a certain Cafo, raised recruits in this region, 
while P. Ventidius was suitably employed in the populous and 
martial territory of Picenum. 3 

The coalition of March 17th had not merely been split and 
shattered: it was being rebuilt, this time against Antonius, by 
a hostile alliance of Caesarian and Pompeian elements. Antonius 
had failed as a non-party statesman in Roman politics; as a 

1 Phil. 3, 20 f. Q. Fufius Calcnus? 

2 Appian, DC 3, 46, 188; 58, 241; Dio 45, 13, 5. 

3 Phil. 10, 22 (Saxa and Cafo); the activities of Ventidius can be deduced from 
subsequent events, perhaps also from a mysterious passage in Appian ( BC 3, 66, 
270), on which see O. E. Schmidt, Pkilologus Li (1892), 198 ff. 



THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 127 

Caesarian leader his primacy was menaced. Senate, plebs and 
veterans were mobilized against him. His enemies had drawn the 
sword: naked force must decide. But not all at once—Antonius 
had not chosen to declare Octavianus a public enemy, nor did 
he now turn his military strength, superior for the moment, in 
the direction of Arretium. The veterans in the private army of 
Octavianus would not stand against Antonius, the Caesarian 
general: yet Antonius was impotent against the heir of the Dic¬ 
tator. Once again the ghost of Caesar prevailed over the living. 

The baffled consul took refuge in invective. 1 His edicts exposed 
and denounced the levying of a private army as treason and 
brigandage, not merely Catilinarian but Spartacist. Turning to 
the person and family of the revolutionary, he invoked both the 
traditional charges of unnatural vice with which the most blame¬ 
less of Roman politicians, whatever his age or party, must expect 
to find himself assailed, and the traditional contempt which the 
Roman noble visited upon the family and extraction of respect¬ 
able municipal men. Octavianus’ mother came from the small 
town of Aricia! 

From dealing with D. Brutus, however, Antonius was impeded 
by no doubts of his own, by no disloyalty among his troops. Out 
of Rome and liberated from the snares of political intrigue, the 
Caesarian soldier recovered his confidence in the fresh air of the 
camp, in the exhilaration of action. Brutus refused to yield. 
Antonius marched northward with Caesarian rapidity and 
entered the province of Cisalpine Gaul. Before the end of the 
year he disposed his forces around the city of Mutina and held 
Brutus entrapped. 

Civil war had begun, but winter enforced a lull in hostilities, 
with leisure for intrigue and diplomacy. With Antonius out of 
the way a Republican faction, relying on the support of anoma¬ 
lous allies ana illicit armies, attempted to seize power in the city. 

So far, the raising of a private army and the first revolutionary 
venture has been narrated as the deed and policy of Octavianus. 
In himself that young man had not seemed a political factor of 
prime importance when he arrived in Italy. Seven months pass, 
and he has money, troops and a following. Whence came his 
adherents and his political funds ? 

Family and kinsmen provide the nucleus of a Roman faction. 
Yet Octavianus’ relatives were not numerous; 2 and he got little 

1 His arguments may be discovered from Cicero’s defence of the morals, family 
and patriotism of Octavianus, Phil . 3, 15 ff. 2 See Table III at end. 



128 THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 

active help from them in the early months. On the surface, the 
consulars Philippus and Marcellus hardly reveal distinction or 
vigour. From his father Philippus inherited comfortable tastes, 
a disposition towards political neutrality and a fair measure of 
guile. 1 During his consulate and ever since he had shunned 
dangerous prominence. The emergence of his stepson as Caesar’s 
heir put all his talents to the test. On that subject he preserved 
monumental discretion, giving visitors no guidance at all. 2 To 
be sure, he had dissuaded the taking up of the inheritance: the 
fact comes from a source that had every reason to enhance the 
courageous and independent spirit of the young Caesar. 3 Though 
Philippus’ caution was congenital, his lack of open enthusiasm 
about Octavianus’ prospects was perhaps only a mask. The 
young man was much in the company of his step-father: the profit 
in political counsel which he derived was never recorded. 

Philippus wished for a quiet old age. So did Marcellus. But 
Marcellus, repenting of his ruinous actions for Pompcius and for 
the Republic, and damaged in repute, surviving a cause for which 
better men had died, will none the less have striven through intrigue 
to maintain the newly retrieved eminence of his illustrious house. 
Philippus and Marcellus were both desperately anxious not to 
be openly compromised. They would have to go quietly for the 
present—but their chance might come. Octavianus' other rela¬ 
tives were of little consequence. Q. Pedius, a knight’s son, legate 
in the Gallic and Civil Wars, and a mysterious person called 
L. Pinarius Scarpus were nephews of the Dictator: they received 
a share of his fortune through the will, which they are said to 
have resigned to Octavianus. 4 Nothing else is known of their 
attitude or activities at this time. 

1 Iiis father, L. Marcius Philippus (cos. 91, censor 86), was an astute politician, 
above, p. 19. In politics the son was able to enjoy support from Pompeius and 
Caesar, as witness his proconsulate of Syria, marriage to Atia and consulate: yet 
he gave his daughter Marcia (by an earlier marriage) for wife to Cato. Philippus 
was a wealthy man and a ‘piscinarius’ (Macrobius 3, 15, 6; Varro, RR 3, 3, 10). 

2 Ad Att. 14, 12, 2 (April 22nd): ‘Octavius, quern quidem sui Caesarem saluta- 
bant, Philippus non, itaque ne nos quidem’; 15, 12, 2 (June 10th): ‘sed quid aetati 
credendum sit, quid nomini, quid hereditati, quid icar^^cm, magni consili est. 
vitricus quidem nihil censebat, quern Asturae vidimus.’ 

3 Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 18, 53 ; Velleius 2, 60, 1 and other sources, all deriving 
from the Autobiography of Augustus, cf. F. Blumenthal, Wiener Studien XXXV 
(1913), 125. Philippus, however, appears to have helped his step-son to pay the 
legacies (Appian, BC 3, 23, 89): for his later services, attested or conjectural, 
below, p. 134. 

4 Appian, BC 2, 23, 89. Suetonius (Divus Iulius 83, 2) calls them grandnephews 
of the Dictator. Possibly true of Pinarius, most unlikely for Pedius, cf. Miinzer, 
Hermes lxxi (1936), 226 ff.; P-VV xix, 38 ff. Q. Pedius had been legate in Gaul 



TIIE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 129 

Octavianus turned for help to friends of his own, to loyal 
Caesarian adherents, to shady adventurers. Good fortune has 
preserved the names of three of his earliest associates, the founda¬ 
tion-members of the faction. In his company at the camp of 
Apollonia were Q. Salvidienus Rufus and M. Vipsanius Agrippa, 
ignoble names and never known before. 1 They were destined for 
glory and for history. When Salvidienus tended flocks upon his 
native hills as a boy, a tongue of flame shot up and hovered over 
his head, a royal portent. 2 Of the origin and family of M. Agrippa, 
friends or enemies have nothing to say: even when it became safe 
to inquire or publish, nothing at all could be discovered. 3 Before 
long a very different character turns up, the Etruscan magnate 
C. Maecenas, a diplomat and a statesman, an artist and a voluptu¬ 
ary. His grandfather was a man of property, of suitable and con¬ 
servative sentiments and ready to defend his interests against 
Roman tribunes. The family appears to have sided with Marius 
in the civil wars, suffering in consequence. But they could not 
be stripped of their ancestors—Octavianus’ friend was of regal 
stock, deriving his descent on the maternal side from the Cilnii, 
a house that held dynastic power in the city of Arretium from 
the beginning. 4 

(BG 2, 2, 1, See.) and proconsul in Hispania Citcrior, after which last command he 
triumphed at the end of 45 b.c. ( C 1 L 1 2 , p. 50): he is not heard of again until his con¬ 
sulate, August43 b.c. Pinarius, otherwise unknown, was a general at Philippi and 
probably the same person as the Antonian Pinarius Scarpus, cf. Miinzer, Hermes 
LXXt (1936), 229, Of another relative of Octavianus, Sex. Appuleius, the husband 
ot his half-sister Octavia, only the name is known (ILS 8963); he was the father 
of Sex. and of M. Appuleius, consuls in 29 b.c. and 20 b.c. respectively. 

1 Velleius 2, 59, 5. 

2 Dio 48, 33, 1. Salvidienus was the elder and the more important of the two, 
cf. Brutus' abusive reference to him (Ad TV/. Brutum 1, 17, 4). No mention of either 
by Cicero—their mere names would have been a damaging revelation. Salvidienus 
may well have been an equestrian officer in Caesar’s army. On the local distribu¬ 
tion of names in ‘-ienus’ see Schulze, LE, 104 ff. and above, p. 93. Coins of this 
man struck in 40 B.c. describe him as ‘Q. Salvius imp. cos. dcsig.’ (ETl/C, R. Rep. 
11, 407). No other authority gives ‘Salvius’ as his name: had he taken to latinizing 
the alien gentilicium ? or else ‘Salvius’ is a cognomen. 

3 Seneca, De ben. 3, 32, 4: ‘M. Agrippae pater ne post Agrippam quidem notus.’ 
Agrippa was the same age to within a year as Octavianus, and is said to have been 
his schoolfellow (Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 7, 16). The gentilicium ‘Vipsanius’ is 
exceedingly rare. Agrippa himself preferred to drop it (Seneca, Controv. 2, 4, 13). 
The origin of it cannot be established: on names in ‘-anius’, cf. Schulze, LE, 531 ff. 

4 For the grandfather, Pro Cluentio 153. The Maecenas present along with 
two other Etruscans, M. Perpema and C. Tarquitius, at the banquet where Ser- 
torius wa9 murdered (Sallust, Hist. 3, 83 m) is presumably a member of this family. 
The father was L. Maecenas (ILS 7848; cf. Nicolaus 31, 133?). Tacitus (Ann. (>, 
u) and many of the moderns give Octavianus’ friend the name ‘Cilnius Mae¬ 
cenas’, which is false (cf. ILS 7848) ; ‘Maecenas’ is a gentilicium , not merely a 



I 3 0 THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the Common¬ 
wealth. Octavianus’ following could not raise the semblance even 
of being a party. It was in truth what in defamation the most 
admirable causes had often been called —a faction: its activity lay 
beyond the constitution and beyond the laws. 

When Caesar went to war with the government, avid and 
desperate men in his party terrified the holders of property. 
But not for long—they were a minority and could be held in 
check. The cause of Caesar’s heir was purely revolutionary in 
origin, attracting all the enemies of society—old soldiers who had 
dissipated gratuities and farms, fraudulent financiers, unscru¬ 
pulous freedmen, ambitious sons of ruined families from the 
local gentry of the towns of Italy. The hazards were palpable, 
and so were the rewards—land, money and power, the estates 
and prerogatives of the nobility for their enjoyment, and the 
daughters of patricians for their brides. 

The men of action in the party like Salvidienus and Agrippa, 
the earliest of the great marshals, occupy the stage of history, 
crowding out the obscurer partisans and secret contributors. The 
party did not appeal to the impecunious only. Its leader needed 
money to attract recruits, subsidize supporters and educate 
opinion in Rome and throughout Italy. Octavianus had more 
skill, fewer scruples and better fortune than the Liberators. By 
the beginning of October the young man possessed a huge war- 
fund—it might provide Antonius with an incentive to attack and 
despoil him. 1 

The provenance of these resources is by no means clear; neither 
is the fate of the private fortune of Caesar the Dictator and the 
various state moneys at his disposal. Antonius is charged with 
refusing to hand over money due to Caesar’s heir—perhaps un¬ 
justly. The legacies to the plebs were paid after all by Octavianus, 
perhaps not wholly from his own fortune and the generous loans 
of his friends. Further, Caesar’s freedmen were very wealthy. 
The heir could claim their services. 2 Nor is this all. Caesar, 
intending to depart without delay to the Balkans, had sent in 
advance to Brundisium, or farther, a part at least of the reserves 
of money which he needed for his campaigns. It would be folly 
to leave a large treasure behind him, a temptation to his enemies. 


cognomen (cf. ‘Carrinas’). For the Cilnii of Arretium, Livy io, 3, 2; for Maecenas’ 
regal ancestry, Horace, Odes 1, i, 1, &c. 

1 Ad. Jam. 12, 23, 2. 

2 Appian, BC 3, 94, 391—one of the great advantages of the adoption. 



THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 131 

Invective asserts, and history repeats, that the consul Antonius 
embezzled the sum of seven hundred million sesterces deposited 
in Rome at the Temple of Ops. 1 Only the clumsy arts of an 
apologist reveal the awkward fact that Octavianus at Brundisium 
in April, for a time at least, had control both of certain funds 
destined for the wars of the Dictator and of the annual tribute 
from the provinces of the East. 2 It is alleged that he duly dis¬ 
patched these moneys to Rome, to the 'Treasury, holding that his 
own inheritance was sufficient. 3 Ilis own patrimony he was soon 
to invest ‘for the good of the Commonwealth’—and much more 
than his patrimony. 

The diversion of public funds was not enough. Octavianus 
also won the support of private investors, among them some of 
the wealthiest bankers of Rome. Atticus, who refused to finance 
the war-chest of the liberators, would not have looked at this 
venture. No matter: Caesar’s heir secured almost at once the 
financial secretaries and political agents of the Dictator. Among 
the first Caesarians to be approached in April was the millionaire 
Balbus. Balbus could keep his counsel, 4 and time has respected 
his secrets. No record survives of his services to Caesar’s heir. 
After November he slips out of history for four years: the manner 
of his return shows that he had not been inactive. 5 The Caesarian 
Rabirius Postumus also shows up, as would be expected, benevo¬ 
lent and alert in any shady transaction. Along with Matius and 
Saserna he advanced money for the celebration of the games in 
July. 6 Oppius was a diplomat as well as a financier. In November 
he is discovered on a familiar errand, this time not for Caesar, 
but for Caesar’s heir—a confidential mission to ensnare an 
elderly and wavering consular. 7 A certain Caecina of Volaterrae 
had recently tried in vain. 8 

When Octavianus journeyed to Campania to raise an army by 
bribery, five adherents of some note participated in the venture. 
Only two names can be recovered, Agrippa and Maecenas. 9 

1 Phil. 2, 93, See. 

2 Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 18, 55, cf. Appian, BC 3, n, 39; Dio 45, 3, 2. On this 

cf. the acute observations of li. R. Motzo, Arm. della facoltd di jUosofia e lettere 
della r. Univ. di Cagliari (1933)^1 ff. 3 Nicolaus, ib. 

4 Ad Att. 14, 21, 2: ‘et nosti virum quam teems.’ 

5 As cos. suff. at the end of 40 n.c. The last mention of him, Ad Att. 16, 11 , 8 

(Nov. 5th). 6 Ad Att. 15, 2, 3. 7 Ib. 16, 15, 3. 

8 Ib.16, 8, 2. Probably not the A. Caecina of Ad farn. 6, 5 ff.; 13, 66. 

9 Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 31, 133: /cat ravra avrio fiovAevofievoj /cat rot? aAAois 

<JVV€&oK€i <£t'Aots*, ot uctcIxov rrjs crrparela? ran' re fi€Ta ravra TrpaypLaran'. i)aav 
8c ovroi MapKos ' Ayplmras, Aevracx; M{a)u<rjvas, Kotvros ' Iovevnos;, MdpKos 



i 3 2 tiie first march on rome 

Octavianus may already have numbered among his supporters 
certain obscure and perhaps unsavoury individuals, such as 
Mindius Marcellus, whose father had been active as a business 
man in Greece. Mindius enriched himself further by the pur¬ 
chase of confiscated estates: he came from Velitrae, Octavianus’ 
own town. 1 

Evidence about the names and origin of the adherents of 
Octavianus in the first years of his revolutionary career is deplor¬ 
ably scanty. For sufficient reasons. History, intent to blacken his 
rival, has preserved instead the public invectives which designate, 
with names and epithets, the senatorial partisans of Antonius as 
a collection of bankrupts and bandits, sinister, fraudulent and 
murderous—Domitius the Apulian who poisoned his nephew, 
Annius Cumber, freedman's son and fratricide, M. lnsteius the 
bath-keeper and brigand from Pisaurum, T. Munatius Plancus 
Bursa the incendiary, the histrionic Caesennius Lento, Nucula 
who had written pantomimes, the Spaniard Decidius Saxa. 2 The 
fact that Octavianus was deemed to be on the side of the Republic 
precluded a full and revealing account of his associates, save 
honourable mention of three tribunes and a legionary commander 
whom he had seduced from the consul. 3 

These were the earliest of his senatorial associates and (except 
for C. Rabirius Postumus) the only such recorded for a long 
time. What remained of the Caesarian faction after the Ides of 
March showed a lack of social distinction or active talent. Many 
of its most prominent members were neutral, evasive, playing 
their own game or bound to Antonius; and some of the best of 
the Caesarian military men were absent in the provinces. 

The earliest and most efficient of Octavianus’ agents were 


ModidAtos kcli Acvklos. Jacoby conjectures a lacuna after the last name. If Nicolaus 
is correct—and correctly transmitted—we might have here not Maecenas but his 
father (so Munzer, P-W xiv, 206). About the last three names few attempts at 
identification have been made, none satisfactory. Acvkios might be Balbus—but 
Balbus* activities were usually less obtrusive. L. Cornificius (cos. 35 b.c\), however, 
an early adherent (Plutarch, Brutus 27), is quite possible. Note the absence of 
Salvidienus. 

5 SEG vi, 102 - Vann, ep., 1925, 93 (Velitrae), honouring him as praefectus 
classis ; cf. Appian, BC 5, 102, 422. On his profiteering, Ad jam. 15, 17, 2; his 
father, lb. 13, 26, 2. 2 Phil. 11, 11 ff.; 13, 26 ff. 

3 lb. 3, 23. The tribunes were Ti. Cannutius, L. Cassius Longinus (a brother 
of the assassin but a Caesarian in sympathy), and D. Carfulenus. The latter was 
presumably an equestrian officer (Bell. Al. 31,3) promoted to senatorial rank by 
Caesar. He commanded the legio Martia for Octavianus at Mutina (Ad jam. 10, 33, 
4): who impelled the legion to desert Antonius is not recorded. L. Egnatuleius, 
Antonius’ quaestor, had the Fourth , cf. Phil. 3, 39, &c. 



THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 133 

Roman knights in standing, Salvidienus, Agrippa and Maecenas: 
to the end his faction retained the mark of its origin. A long time 
passes before any number of senators emerge on his side. When 
four years have elapsed and Octavianus through all hazards, 
through all vicissitudes of craft and violence, extorts recognition 
as Caesarian leader beside Antonius, only eight men of senatorial 
rank can be discovered among his generals—and they are not an 
impressive company. 1 

Senators who had come safely through civil war or w r ho owed 
rank and fortune to one revolution were not eager to stir up 
another. But Octavianus wished to be much more than the leader 
of a small band of desperadoes and financiers, incongruously 
allied. The help of the bankers w r as private and personal, not the 
considered policy of a whole class. Octavianus needed the Senate 
as well. He hoped to win sympathy, if not support, from some 
of the more respectable Caesarians, who w r ere alienated by the 
pretensions of Antonius, alarmed at his power. In the first place, 
the consuls-designate, Hirtius and Pansa, whose counsel Octavi¬ 
anus sought wdien he arrived in Campania. Friends of Caesar, to 
whom they owed all, they would surely not repel his heir. Yet 
these men, mere municipal aristocrats, lacked experience of 
affairs, vigour of personality and family influence. In public 
Cicero professed warm and eager admiration for their loyalty, 
their patriotism, their capacity. His private letters tell another 
story: he derided them as torpid and bibulous. 2 

Hirtius and Pansa might yet save the Republic, not, as some 
hoped, by action, but by preventing the actions of others. Even 
a nonentity is a power when consul at Rome. A policy they had, 
and they might achieve it—to restore concord in the Caesarian 
party and so in the Roman State. They would gladly see Antonius 
curbed—but not destroyed: they were not at all willing to be 
captured by an anti-Caesarian faction and forced into the conduct 
of a civil war. Hirtius was accessible to the sinister influence of 
Balbus 3 —no good prospect for the Republicans, but a gain for 
Octavianus. Less is known about Pansa. Yet Pansa was no 
declared enemy of Antonius ; 4 and he had married the daughter 

1 Below, p. 235. 

2 Ad Att. 16, 1, 4: ‘A ijpog 7 to\v£ in vino et in somno istorum.’ Likewise Q. 
Cicero, Ad fam. 16, 27, 1: ‘quos ego penitus novi libidinum et languoris effeminatis- 
simi animi plenos.’ 

3 Ad Att. 14, 20, 4: ‘ille optime loquitur, sed vivit habitatque cum Balbo, qui 
item bene loquitur.’ 

4 lb. 15, 22, 1 : ‘inimicum Antonio? quando aut cur? quousque ludemur?’ 



i 34 THE FIRST MARCH ON ROME 

of the Antonian consular Q. Fufius Calenus, an able politician. 1 
Pansa, however, encouraged Octavianus at a quite early date. 

Along with Pansa in this context certain other names are 
mentioned, P. Servilius, L. Piso and Cicero: they are described 
as neutrals, their policy dishonest. 2 No word here of the con¬ 
sular Philippus and Marcellus. Another source, though likewise 
not of the best, alleges that the pair made a secret compact with 
Cicero, Cicero to provide political support for Octavianus while 
enjoying the protection of his financial resources and his army. 3 
Not all invention, perhaps. The subtle intriguers were now 
showing their hand. In November they were clearly working 
for their young kinsman. 4 But the situation was complicated, 
and Philippus’ policy was ambiguous. Even if stirred by the 
example of his father’s actions on behalf of the young Pompeius, 
he was reluctant to break with Antonius, for he hoped through 
Antonius to get an early consulate for his own son. 5 Nor was 
the devious Marcellus wholly to be neglected—he had family 
connexions that could be brought into play, for the Caesarian 
cause or for the Republic. 6 

Whatever the rumours or likelihood of secret plotting, the 
young adventurer required the open backing of senior statesmen 
in the Senate: through their auctoritas he might acquire recog¬ 
nition and official standing. Which of the principes were ready 
to give their sanction? 

’ Phil. 8, 19. 

- Nicolaus, Vita Caesar is 28, m: rfcrav S’ ol eV fiecroj ttju eydpav avdyovTC? 
avTcou teat TTparrovre s’ tovto. tovtojv S’ r)crui' Kopvfialot IJottAlos, Ovifhos, Acvkios, 
Trdi’TOJv 8e /udAurra KiKtpcov. 3 Plutarch, Cicero 44. 

4 Ad Att. 16, 14, 2. 

5 Ad Jam. 12, 2, 2. lie hoped to squeeze Brutus and Cassius out of the consulate 
of 41 B.c. and get one of the places for his son, praetor in 44. 

6 His mother was a Juma (Ad fam. 15, 8), presumably the aunj of I). Brutus: 
and he was also connected with Scr. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 u.<\). I'or a table of 
these relationships, Munzer, RA, 407. 



X. THE SENIOR STATESMAN 


I N the Senate three men of consular rank had spoken against 
Antonius, namely L. Piso, P. Servilius and Cicero, and there¬ 
fore might be said to have encouraged the designs of Octavianus. 
That was all they had in common—in character, career and 
policy the three consulars were discordant and irreconcilable. 

Piso, an aristocrat of character and discernment, united loyalty 
to Roman standards of conduct with a lively appreciation of the 
literature and philosophy of Hellas: he was the friend and patron 
of Philodemus, the poet and scholar. 1 Though elegant in his 
tastes, Piso suited his way of living to his family tradition and 
to his fortune, which would not have supported ostentatious 
display and senseless luxury. 2 Being the father-in-law of Caesar, 
and elected through the agency of Pompeius and Caesar to the 
consulate, Piso saw no occasion to protect Cicero from the threat, 
sentence and consequences of exile. Cicero remembered and 
attacked Piso for his conduct of the governorship of Macedonia, 
both before and after the proconsul returned, on any excuse. 
Piso replied, no doubt with some effect. 3 Nor did any political 
enemy or ambitious youth come forward to arraign by pro¬ 
secution a proconsul alleged to have been corrupt, incompetent 
and calamitous. Piso, however, withdrew more and more from 
active politics. Yet his repute, or at least his influence, is suf¬ 
ficiently demonstrated by his election, though reluctant, to the 
censorship in 50 B.C., an honour to which many consulars must 
have aspired as due recognition of public service and political 
wisdom. 

The mild and humane doctrines of the Epicureans, liable as 
they were to the easy and conventional reproach of neglecting 
the public good for the pursuit of selfish pleasure, might still be 

1 Cicero, In Pisonem 68 ff. The learned Asconius (14 - p. 16 Clark) provides 
the name of Philodemus. 

2 He lived in a hovel (‘gurgustium’, InPisoncm 13), and his entertainments were 
lacking in splendour (ib. 67). The fortunes of certain eminent nobiles were far from 
ample. The excellent L. Aurelius Cotta (cos. 65 b.c.) lived in a ‘villula sordida et 
valde pusilla’ (Ad Att. 12, 27, 1). In contrast, the mansions of Cicero. 

3 Though it demands faith to believe that ‘Sallust’, In Ciceronem, a brief, 
vigorous and concentrated attack, was written by Piso, as has been argued by 
Reitzenstein and Schwartz, Hermes xxxm (1898), 87 ft.: accepted by E. Meyer, 
Caesars Monarchies , 163 f. 



136 the senior statesman 

of more use to the Commonwealth than the more elevated prin¬ 
ciples that were professed, and sometimes followed, with such 
robust conviction. Piso, a patriotic Roman, did not abandon all 
care for his country and lapse into timorous inactivity under the 
imminent threat of civil war or during the contest. He exerted 
himself for mediation or compromise then and later, both during 
the struggle between Caesar and Pompeius and when Roman 
politics again appeared to be degenerating into faction strife. 1 
His character was vindicated by his conduct, his sagacity by the 
course of events: to few, indeed, among his contemporaries was 
accorded that double and melancholy satisfaction. 

Piso w r as an ex-Caesarian turned independent. P. Servilius 
Isauricus, the son of a conservative and highly respected parent, 
began his political career under the auspices of Cato. 2 Most of 
his friends, allies and relatives followed Cato and Pompeius in 
the Civil War. Servilius, however, had been ensnared by Caesar, 
perhaps with a bribe to his ambition, the consulate of 48 B.c. 
Servilius may not have been a man of action—yet he governed 
the province of Asia for Caesar with some credit in 46-44 b.c. 
On his return to Rome late in the summer Servilius embarked 
upon a tortuous policy, to enhance his power and that of his 
clan. His family connexions would permit an independent and, 
if he chose, a conciliatory position between the parties. Being 
related to Brutus, to Cassius and to Lepidus he might become 
the link in a new political alignment between Caesarians and Re¬ 
publicans. That prospect would certainly appeal to his mother- 
in-law Servilia. 

Whatever the motive, his earliest acts caused discomfort to 
Antonius—he criticized the policy of the consul on September 
2nd. When Octavianus marched on Rome, however, no news was 
heard of P. Servilius: like other consulars averse from Antonius 
but unwilling to commit themselves too soon, he kept out of the 
way. Yet he probably lent a tribune: Ti. Cannutius belonged to 
the following of Isauricus. 3 

Piso and P. Servilius each had a change of side to their credit. 
No politician could compete with Cicero for versatility, as the 
attacks of his enemies and his own apologies attest. The sagacious 
and disinterested Piso would hardly lend help or sanction to the 

1 Caesar, BC i, 3, 6; Plutarch, Pompeius 58, and Caesar 37; Dio 41, 16, 4; 
Cicero, Ad Att. 7, 13, 1; Ad fam. 14, 14, 2. 

2 Munzer, RA t 355 ff.; P-W 11 A, 1798 ff. 

3 Suetonius, De rhet. 4. 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 137 

levying of a private army against a consul of the Roman People. 
Servilius, however, was not altogether blameless, while Cicero 
stood out as the head and front of the group of politicians who 
intended to employ the Caesarian adventurer to destroy the 
Caesarian party. 

Cicero claimed that he had always been consistent in his 
political ideal, though not in the means he adopted to attain it. 
His defence can hardly cover the whole of his career. Yet it 
would be perverse and unjust to rail and carp at an aspirant to 
political honours who, after espousing various popular causes 
and supporting the grant of an extraordinary command to Pom- 
peius, from honest persuasion or for political advancement, after¬ 
wards became more conservative when he gained the consulate 
and entered the ranks of the governing oligarchy. Cicero had 
never been a revolutionary—not even a reformer. In the years 
following his consulate he wavered between Pompeius and the 
enemies of Pompeius, trusted by neither. In Cato he admired 
yet deplored the rigid adherence to principle and denial of com¬ 
promise; and he claimed that he had been abandoned by the 
allies of Cato. Towards Pompeius he continued to profess 
loyalty, despite harsh rebuffs and evidences of cold perfidy, for 
which, through easy self-deception, he chose to blame Caesar, 
the agent of his misfortunes, rather than Pompeius with whom 
the last word rested. Pompeius was the stronger—from the 
earliest years of Cicero’s political career he seemed to have 
dominated the stage and directed the action. Twice the pre¬ 
dominance of Pompeius was threatened (in 61-60 B.c. and in 56): 
each time he reasserted it in a convincing fashion. Cicero sur¬ 
rendered to the obsession. Otherwise there were many things 
that might have brought Cicero and Caesar together—a common 
taste for literature, to which Pompeius was notoriously alien, and 
common friends, a hankering for applause on the one side and a 
gracious disposition to please and to flatter on the other. 

Cicero came close to being a neutral in the Civil War. Return¬ 
ing from his province of Cilicia, he made what efforts he could 
to avert hostilities. He showed both judgement and impartiality. 1 
It was too late. He had few illusions about Pompeius, little 
sympathy with his allies. Yet he found himself, not unnaturally, 
on the side of Pompeius, of the party of the constitution, and of 
the majority of the active consulars. The leaders were Pompeius 
and Cato. It was clearly the better cause—and it seemed the 

1 Ad Jam. 16, 12, 2; Velleius 2, 48, 5. 



138 the senior statesman 

stronger. Not that Cicero expected war—and when war came, 
even Cato seemed willing to go back upon his principles and 
make concessions to Caesar . 1 

Cicero was induced to accept a military command under Pom- 
peius, but lingered in Campania, refusing to follow him across 
the seas, perhaps from failure to comprehend his strategy. Then 
Caesar wooed him assiduously, through the familiar offices of 
Balbus and Oppius and by personal approach. But Cicero stood 
firm: he refused to come to Rome and condone Caesar’s acts and 
policy by presence in the Senate. Courage, but also fear—he was 
intimidated by the bloodthirsty threats of the absent Pompeians, 
who would deal with neutrals as with enemies. Spain might bring 
them victory after all. The agonies of a long flirtation with neu¬ 
trality drove him to join Pompeius, without waiting for news of 
the decision in Spain . 2 It was not passion or conviction, but im¬ 
patience and despair. Pharsalus dissolved their embrace. Cicero 
was persuaded to avail himself of the clemency and personal 
esteem of the victor. 

The years of life under the Dictatorship were unhappy and 
inglorious. The continuance of the struggle with the last rem¬ 
nants of the Pompeians and the sometimes hoped for but ever 
delayed return to settled conditions threw him into a deep de¬ 
pression. He shunned the Senate, the theatre of his old triumphs. 
With the passing of time, he might indeed have silenced his 
conscience and acquiesced in a large measure of authoritative 
government at Rome. He was not a Cato or a Brutus; and Brutus 
later remarked 'as long as Cicero can get people to give him 
what he w r ants, to flatter and to praise him, he will put up with 
servitude .’ 3 But Cicero was able to hold out against Caesar. 
Though in the Senate he was once moved to celebrate the cle¬ 
mency and magnanimity of the Dictator , 4 he soon set to work 
upon a vindication of Cato, which he published, inaugurating 
a fashion. Caesar answered with praise of the author’s talent and 
a pamphlet traducing the memory of the Republican martyr. 
Through emissaries and friends he induced Cicero to compose 

1 Ad Alt. 7, 15, 2. 

2 He may, however, have been influenced by circumstantial rumours. It was by 
no means unlikely that Caesar would be entangled and defeated in Spain by the 
experienced Pompeian generals. 

J Ad M. Brutum 1, 17,4: ‘n»mium timemus mortem et exsilium et paupertatem. 
haec nimirum videntur Ciceroni ultima esse in malis, et durri habeat a quibus 
impetret quae velit, et a quibus colatur ac laudetur, servitutem, honorificam 
modo, non aspernatur.’ 

4 In the speech Pro Marcello (autumn, 46 B.C.). 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 139 

some kind of open letter, expressing approval of the government. 
Oppius and Balbus found the result not altogether satisfactory. 
Rather than emend, Cicero gave it up, gladly. Caesar did not 
insist. Time was short—agents like Balbus were of more use to 
a busy and imperious autocrat. 

Then came the Ides of March and, two days later, the meeting 
of the Senate in the Temple of Tellus, when Cicero, like other 
statesmen, spoke for security and concord. Peace calls for con¬ 
stant vigilance. Cicero later claimed that from that day forward 
he never deserted his post. 1 Facts refute the assertion. Between 
March 17th and September 2nd, a period of nearly six months, 
the most critical for the new and precarious concord, Cicero was 
never even seen in the Senate. In spring and summer the cause 
of ordered government was still not beyond hope: to save it, 
what better champion than a patriot who boasted never to have 
been a party politician? As Antonius had once said to him, the 
honest neutral does not run away.- In the autumn, too late: 
Cicero returning brought not peace but aggravation of discord 
and impulsion to the most irrational of all civil wars. 3 

After March 17th, the sharp perception that neither the policy 
nor the party of Caesar had been abolished brought a rapid disillu¬ 
sionment. Even before the Ides of March he thought of departing 
to Greece and remaining there till the end of the year, to return 
under happier auspices when Hirtius and Pansa were consuls. 
The legislation of June 1st deepened his dismay. Nor was any 
decision or hope to be discerned among the Liberators, as the con¬ 
gress at Antium showed, or any armed support from the provinces. 
Early July brought well-authenticated reports from Spain that 
Sex. Pompeius had come to terms with the government. Cicero 
was sorry. 4 The domination of the Caesarian faction in the 
person of Antonius appeared unshakable. At last, after long 
doubt and hesitation, Cicero set out for Greece. He sailed from 
Pompeii on July 17th. 

Contrary weather buffeted his vessel in the Straits of Messina. 
At Leucopetra, near Rhegium, he had cognizance on August 7th 
of news and rumours from Rome. The situation appeared to 
have changed. Antonius gave signs of a readiness to conciliate 

1 Phil . 1, 1: ‘nec vero usquam disccdebam nec a re publica deiciebam oculos ex 
eo die quo in aedem Telluris convocati sumus.* 

* Ad Att. 10, io, 2: ‘Nam qui se medium esse vult in patria manet’ (May, 
49 B e.). 

3 As Mommsen called it, Ges. Schr. iv, 173. Cf. Dio 46, 34. 

4 Ad Att. 15, 29, 1 : ‘Sextum scutum abicerc nolebam.’ 



i 4 o THE SENIOR STATESMAN 

the Senate; there would be a meeting of the Senate on August ist 
and some prospect that Brutus and Cassius might return to 
political life. 1 

Cicero turned back. Near Velia on August 17th he met Brutus, 
occupied in the last preparations for leaving Italy. L. Piso, he 
learned, had indeed spoken in the Senate—but with nobody to 
support him. The sanguine hopes of a concerted assault on the 
Caesarian position were rudely dispelled. Cicero’s changed de¬ 
cision had been all in vain. He persisted, however, and returned, 
though heavy of heart and with no prospect at all of playing a 
directing part in Roman politics. 2 

So he thought then—and the month of September brought no 
real comfort or confidence. Back in Rome, Cicero refrained from 
attending the Senate on the first day of September. Antonius 
uttered threats. Cicero appeared on September 2nd and pro¬ 
tested against the actions of the consul. His observations were 
negative and provocative: they called forth from Antonius com¬ 
plaints of violated friendship and a damaging review of Cicero’s 
past career (September 19th). Cicero thought it best not to turn 
up. He salved his dignity by the belief that he was in danger of 
his life, and by the composition of a speech in reply, the pamphlet 
known as the Second Philippic : 3 it was never spoken—the adver¬ 
saries were destined never to meet. 

By venturing to attack the policy of Antonius, Cicero, it might 
be argued, came out into the open at last, and made history by a 
resolute defence of the Republic. But Cicero as yet had not com¬ 
mitted himself to any irreparable feud with Antonius or to any 
definite line of action. The Senate had already—and repeatedly 
—witnessed more ferocious displays of political invective, as 
when he contended with L. Piso ten years earlier. 

Between Antonius and Cicero there lay no ancient grudge, no 
deep-seated cause of an inevitable clash: on the contrary, relations 
of friendship, to which they could each with justice appeal. In 
49 B.c. Antonius, then in charge of Italy, treated Cicero with tact 
and with respect, advising him not to join Pompeius, but not 
placing obstacles in his way. 4 After Pharsalus, the same amicable 
attitude. 5 Again, after the assassination of Caesar, nothing but 

1 Ad Alt. 16, 7, 1; Phil, i, 8. Cf. above, p. 117. 

2 lb. 16, 7, 7: ‘nec ego nunc, ut Brutus censebat, istuc ad rem publicam 
capessendam venio/ 

3 lb. 16, 1 x, 1 ff. (Nov. 5th). 

4 lb. 10, 8a (a very friendly letter) ; 10, 10, 2 (an extract from another). 

5 lb. ii, 7, 2. 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 141 

deference. 1 Cicero’s return provoked an incident, but gave no 
indication that the day of September 2nd would be a turning- 
point in Roman politics. 

For the moment, a lull in affairs. Early in October the storm 
broke. It came from another quarter. The collected correspon¬ 
dence of Cicero preserved none of the letters he received from 
Octavianus. That is not surprising: the editor knew his business. 
A necessary veil was cast over the earlier and private preliminaries 
in the anomalous alliance between oratory and arms, between 
the venerable consular and the revolutionary adventurer. There 
is a danger, it is true, that the relations of Cicero and Octavianus 
may be dated too far back, interpreted in the light of subsequent 
history, and invested with a significance foreign even to the 
secret thoughts of the agents themselves. Cicero had first made 
the acquaintance of Caesar’s heir in April. 2 Then nothing more 
for six weeks. In June, however, he recognized that the youth was 
to be encouraged and kept from allying himself with Antonius;* 
in July, Octavianus became a fact and a force in politics. 

Events were moving swiftly. In his account of the reasons that 
moved him to return, Cicero makes no mention of the Ludi 
Victoriae Caesaris and the consequent breach between Antonius 
and Octavianus. Yet of these events he will perhaps have had 
cognizance at Leucopetra. Only a domestic quarrel, it might 
appear, in the ranks of the Caesarian party: yet clearly of a kind 
to influence the public policy of Antonius. 

When he made his decision to return, Cicero did not know that 
unity had been restored in the Caesarian party. Again, in the first 
two speeches against Antonius, no word of the young Caesar: 
yet the existence of Antonius’ rival must have been reckoned as 
a political factor by Cicero and P. Servilius when they attacked 
the consul. 

However that may be, by the beginning of October Caesar’s 
heir was an alarming phenomenon. But even now, during the 
months of October and November, Cicero was full of distrust, sus¬ 
pecting the real designs of Octavianus and doubting his capacity 
to stand against Antonius. Octavianus for his part exerted every 
art to win the confidence of Cicero, or at least to commit him 
openly to the revolutionary cause. By the beginning of November 
daily letters passed between them. Octavianus now had an army 

1 Ad Att. 14, 13a; 13b (Cicero’s reply). 1 Above, p. 114. 

3 lb. 15, 12, 2: ‘sed tamen alendus est et, ut nihil aliud, ab Antonio se- 
iungendus.’ 



I 4 2 the senior statesman 

of three thousand veterans in Campania. He pestered Cicero for 
advice, sending to him his trusty agent Caecina of Volaterrae with 
demands for an interview, for Cicero was close at hand. 1 Cicero 
refused to be compromised in public. Then Octavianus urged 
Cicero to come to Rome, to save the State once again, and renew 
the memory of the glorious Nones of December. 2 

Cicero was not to be had. He left Campania and retired to 
Arpinum, foreseeing trouble. After Caecina, Octavianus sent 
Oppius to invite him, but in vain. 3 The example—or the exhorta¬ 
tions—of Philippus and of Marcellus were likewise of no weight. 4 
Cicero’s path lay through Aquinum, but apparently he missed 
Hirtius and Balbus. They were journeying to Campania, osten¬ 
sibly to take the waters. 5 6 Wherever there was trouble, the secret 
agent Balbus might be detected in the background. For Cicero, 
in fear at the prospect of Antonius’ return with troops from 
Brundisium, there was safety in Arpinum, which lay off the main 
roads. The young revolutionary marched on Rome without him. 

About Octavianus, Cicero was indeed most dubious. "The 
veterans arose at the call of Caesar’s heir, the towns of Campania 
were enthusiastic. Among the plebs he had a great following; and 
he might win more respectable backing. ‘But look at his age, his 
name.’ 0 Octavianus was but a youth, he lacked auctoritas. On the 
other hand, he was the heir of the Dictator, a revolutionary under 
the sign of the avenging of Caesar. Of that purpose, no secret, no 
disguise. To be sure, he offered a safeguard to the conservatives 
by permitting one of the assassins of Caesar to be elected tribune 7 
—merely a political gesture, easily made and easily revoked. 
More significant and most ominous was the speech delivered in 
Rome, the solemn oath with hand outstretched to the statue of 
Caesar the Dictator. 8 Cicero in alarm confessed the ruinous 
alternatives: ‘if Octavianus succeeded and won power, the acta 
of Caesar would be more decisively confirmed than they were on 
March 17th; if he failed, Antonius would be intolerable.’ 0 

Cicero was all too often deluded in his political judgements. 
No easy optimism this time, however, but an accurate forecast of 
the hazards of supporting the Caesarian revolutionary. Octavi- 

1 Ad Att. 16, 8 (Nov. 2nd), cf. 16, q (one or two days later). 

2 lb. 16, ir, (). 3 lb. 16, 15,3. 

4 lb. 16, 14, 2: ‘nec me Philippus aut Marcellus movet. alia enim corum ratio 

est, : et, si non cst, tamen videtur.’ 

5 Ad farrt. i6, 24, 2—of uncertain date, but fitting November of this year. 

6 Ad Att. 16, 8, 1, cf. 16. 14, 2. 7 lb. 16, 15, 3. 

H Tb. 16, 15, 3. l) lb. 16, 14, 1. 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 143 

anus professed the utmost devotion for Cicero and called him 
‘father’—an appellation which the sombre Brutus was later to 
recall with bitter rebuke. 1 Octavianus has sometimes been con¬ 
demned for cold and brutal treachery towards a parent and a 
benefactor. That facile and partial interpretation will be repulsed 
in the interests, not of Octavianus, but of the truth. The political 
alliance between Octavianus and Cicero was not merely the plot 
of a crafty and unscrupulous youth. 

Cicero was possessed by an overweening opinion of his own 
sagacity: it had ever been his hope to act as political mentor to 
one of the generals of the Republic. When Pompeius had sub¬ 
dued the East to the arms of Rome, he received an alarming pro¬ 
posal of this kind: to his Scipio, Cicero was to play the Laelius. 
Again, on his return from exile, Cicero hoped that Pompeius 
could be induced to go back on his allies, drop Caesar, and 
become amenable to guidance: he was abruptly brought to heel 
by Pompeius, and his influence as a statesman was destroyed. 
The experience and wisdom of the non-party statesman was not 
invoked by Caesar the Dictator in his organization of the Roman 
Commonwealth. Nor was Antonius more susceptible. Cicero 
was constrained to lavish his treasures upon an unworthy object 
—in April of the year 44 B.c. he wrote to Dolabella a letter which 
offered that young man the congratulations, the counsels, and 
the alliance of a senior statesman. 2 

Of that persistent delusion, Cicero cannot be acquitted. Aware 
of the risks, he hoped to use Octavianus against Antonius and 
discard him in the end, if he did not prove pliable. It was Cato’s 
fatal plan all over again—the doom of Antonius would warn the 
young man against aspiring to military despotism and would 
reveal the strength which the Commonwealth could still muster. 
In public pronouncements Cicero went sponsor for the good 
conduct and loyalty of the adventurer, 3 in private letters he 
vaunted the excellence of his own plan: it may be doubted 
whether at any time he felt that he could trust Octavianus. 
Neither was the dupe. 

When he heard of the failure of the march on Rome, Cicero 

1 Ad M. Brutum 1, 17, 5: ‘licet ergo patrcm appellet Octavius Ciceronem, 
rcferat omnia, laudct, gratias agat, tamen illud apparebit verba rebus esse con- 
tram.’ Cf. Plutarch, Cicero 45. 

2 Ad farn. 9, 14. 

3 Phil. 5, 50: ‘omnis habeo cognitos sensus adulescentis. nihil est illi re publica 
carius, nihil vestra auctoritate gravius, nihil bonorum virorum iudicio optatius, 
nihil vera gloria dulcius.’ 



i 4 4 THE SENIOR STATESMAN 

must have congratulated himself on his refusal to be lured into 
a premature championing of the Republic. He resolved to wait 
until January ist before appearing in the Senate. But Octavianus 
and D. Brutus were insistent—the former with his illicit army, 
perilously based on Etruria, Brutus in the Cisalpina, contuma¬ 
cious against a consul. As they were both acting on private 
initiative for the salvation of the State, they clamoured to have 
their position legalized. The offensive was therefore launched 
earlier than had been expected. 

Now came the last and heroic hour, in the long and varied 
public life of Cicero. Summoning all his oratory and all his 
energies for the struggle against Antonius, eager for war and 
implacable, he would hear no word of peace or compromise: he 
confronted Antonius with the choice between capitulation and 
destruction. Six years before, the same policy precipitated war 
between the government and a proconsul. 

Fanatic intensity seems foreign to the character of Cicero, 
absent from his earlier career: there precisely lies the explanation. 
Cicero was spurred to desperate action by the memory of all the 
humiliations of the past—exile, a fatal miscalculation in politics 
under the predominance of Pompeius and the compulsory 
speeches in defence of the tools of despotism, Balbus, Vatinius 
and Gabinius, by the Dictatorship of Caesar and the guilty know¬ 
ledge of his own inadequacy. He knew how little he had achieved 
for the Republic despite his talent and his professions, how shame¬ 
fully he had deserted his post after March 17th when concord 
and ordered government might still have been achieved. 

Now, at last, a chance had come to redeem all, to assert leader¬ 
ship, to free the State again or go down with it in ruin. Once he 
had written about the ideal statesman. Political failure, driving 
him back upon himself, had then sought and created consolations 
in literature and in theory: the ideal derived its shape from his 
own disappointments. In the Republic he set forth the lineaments 
and design, not of any programme or policy in the present, but 
simply the ancestral constitution of Rome as it was—or should 
have been—a century earlier, namely a stable and balanced state 
with Senate and People keeping loyally to their separate functions 
in pursuit of the common good, submitting to the guidance of a 
small group of enlightened aristocrats. 1 There was place in the 

1 For this conception of the De re publico, (a book about which too much has 
been written), cf. R. Heinze, Hermes lix (1924), 73 ff. «= Vom Geist des Rtimer- 
tums (1938), 142 ff. 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 145 

ranks of the principes for varied talent, for civil as well as military 
distinction; access lay open to merit as well as to birth; and the 
good statesman would not be deserted by his peers, coerced by 
military dynasts or harried by tribunes. 

This treatise was published in 51 b.c. About the same time 
Cicero had also been at work upon the Laws , which described in 
detail the institutions of a traditional but liberal oligarchy in a state 
where men were free but not equal. He returned to it under the 
Dictatorship of Caesar, 1 but never published, perhaps never com¬ 
pleted, this supplement to the Republic. After the Ides of March, 
however, came a new impulsion to demonstrate his conception 
of a well-ordered state and to corroborate it in the light of the most 
recent history. The De officiis is a theoretical treatment of the 
obligations which a citizen should render to the Commonwealth, 
that is, a manual of civic virtue. Once again the ideal statesman 
is depicted in civilian rather than in military garb; and the am¬ 
bition of unscrupulous principes is strongly denounced. 2 The 
lust for power ends in tyranny, which is the negation of liberty, 
the laws and of all civilized life. 3 So much for Caesar. 

But the desire for fame is not in itself an infirmity or a vice. 
Ambition can be legitimate and laudable. De gloria was written 
in the same year as a pendant to De officiis . 4 Cicero defined the 
nature of glory, no doubt showing how far, for all their splendour 
and power, the principes Crassus, Caesar and Pompeius had fallen 
short of genuine renown. The good statesman will not imitate 
those military dynasts: but he needs fame and praise to sustain 
his efforts for the Commonwealth—and he deserves to receive 
them in full measure. 5 

Such were Cicero’s ideas and preoccupations in the summer 
and autumn of 44 B.c. With war impending, Atticus took alarm 
and dissuaded him from action. In November he urged his friend 
to turn to the writing of history. 6 Cicero was obdurate: he hoped 

1 Ad Jam. 9, 2, 5. 

2 De officiis 1, 25 (Crassus’ definition of the money a princeps required); ib. 26 
(on the ‘temeritas’ of Caesar). 

3 Ib. 3, 83: ‘ecce tibi qui rex populi Romani domir.usque omnium gentium 
esse concupiverit idque perfecerit. hanc cupiditatem si honestam quis esse dicit, 
amens est; probat enim legum et libertatis interitum earumque oppressionem 
taetram et detestabilcm gloriosam putat.’ 

* It was finished first and sent to Atticus in July (Ad Att. i\ 2, 6), the De officiis 
not until November (ib. 16, 11, 4). 

5 This may perhaps be supported by what St. Augustine records about the De 
re publica (De civ. dei 5, 13): ‘loquitur de instituendo principe civitatis quem dicit 
alendum esse gloria.’ 

6 Ad Att. 16. 13b, 2. 



146 the senior statesman 

to make history. Duty and glory inspired the veteran statesman 
in his last and courageous battle for what he believed to be the 
Republic, liberty and the laws against the forces of anarchy or 
despotism, lie would stand as firm as Cato had stood, he would 
be the leader of the Optimates. 

It might fairly be claimed that Cicero made ample atonement 
for earlier failures and earlier desertions, if that were the ques¬ 
tion at issue. It is not: a natural and indeed laudable partiality 
for Cicero, and for the ‘better cause’, may cover the intrusion 
of special and irrelevant pleading. The private virtues of Cicero, 
his rank in the literature of Rome, and his place in the history of 
civilization tempt and excuse the apologist, when he passes from 
the character of the orator to defend his policy. It is presump¬ 
tuous to hold judgement over the dead at all, improper to adduce 
any standards other than those of a man’s time, class and station. 
Yet it was precisely in the eyes of contemporaries that Cicero was 
found wanting, incompetent to emulate the contrasted virtues of 
Caesar and of Cato, whom Sallustius, an honest man and no de¬ 
tractor of Cicero, reckoned as the greatest Romans of his time. 1 
Eager to maintain his dignitas as a consular, to pursue gloria as an 
orator and a statesman, Cicero did not exhibit the measure of 
loyalty and constancy, of Roman virtus and aristocratic magnitudo 
animi that would have justified the exorbitant claims of his per¬ 
sonal ambition. 

The Second Philippic , though technically perfect, is not a 
political oration, for it was never delivered: it is an exercise in 
petty rancour and impudent defamation like the invectives against 
Piso. The other speeches against Antoni us, however, may be 
counted, for vigour, passion and intensity, among the most 
splendid of all the orations. But oratory can be a menace to 
posterity as well as to its author or its audience. There was 
another side—not Antonius only, but the neutrals. Cicero was 
not the only consular who professed to be defending the highest 
good of the Roman People. The survival of the Philippics im¬ 
perils historical judgement and wrecks historical perspective. 

Swift, confident and convincing, the Philippics carry the im¬ 
pression that their valiant author stood in sole control of the 
policy of the State. The situation was much more complicated 
than that, issues entangled, factions and personalities at variance. 
The imperious eloquence of Cicero could not prevail over the 
doubts and misgivings of men who knew his character and 

1 RG 53, 6, cf. above, p. 25. 



THE SENIOR STATESMAN 147 

recalled his career. His hostility towards Antonius was declared 
and ferocious. But Cicero's political feuds, however spirited at 
the outset, had not always been sustained with constancy. 1 
Cicero might rail at the consulars: but the advocates of concord 
and a settlement based upon compromise were neither fools nor 
traitors. If they followed Cicero there was no telling where they 
would end. When Republicans both distrusted the politician and 
disapproved of his methods, the attitude of the Caesarians could 
be surmised : yet Caesarians themselves were divided in allegiance, 
for Antonius, for Octavianus, or for peace. The new consuls had 
a policy of their own, if only they were strong enough to achieve it. 

Public pronouncements on matters of high policy, however 
partisan in tone, cannot altogether suppress the arguments of 
the other side, whether they employ to that end calumny or 
silence: they often betray what they strive most carefully to 
conceal. But certain topics, not the least important, may never 
come up for open debate. The Senate listened to speeches and 
passed decrees; the Republic, liberated from military despotism, 
entered into the possession of its rights again: that is to say, 
behind the scenes private ambition, family politics and high 
finance were at their old games. Cicero and the ambiguous 
contest of the Republic against a recalcitrant proconsul occupy 
the stage and command the attention of history: in the back¬ 
ground, emerging from time to time, Philippus, Servilius and 
other schemers, patent but seldom noticed, and Balbus never 
even named. 

In Cicero the Republic possessed a fanatical and dangerous 
champion, boldly asserting his responsibility for the actions of 
Octavianus. 2 * His policy violated public law—with what chance 
of success on a long calculation, or even on a short? Of the 
wisdom of raising up Caesar’s heir, through violence and illegal 
arms against Antonius, there were clearly two opinions. Octavi¬ 
anus marched on Rome. Where was Brutus? What a chance he 
was missing b When Brutus heard of these alarming transactions, 
he protested bitterly. 4 Whatever be thought of those qualities 
which contemporaries admired as the embodiment of aristocratic 

1 ‘Maiore enirn simultates adpetebat animo quarn tferebat’, as Pollio wrote 
(Seneca, Suasoriae 6, 24). 

2 Phil. 3, 19: ‘quorum consiliorum Caesari me auctorem et hortatorem et esse et 
fuisse fateor.’ 

% Ad Aft. 16, S, 2: ‘O Brute, ubi es? quantam evKaipuir amittis!’ 

4 For his views about the alliance between Cicero and Octavianus, cf. esp. Ad 
M. Brutum 1, 16 and 17 (summer, 43 B.c\). 



148 the senior statesman 

virtus (without always being able to prevail against posterity or 
the moral standards of another age), Brutus was not only a 
sincere and consistent champion of legality, but in this matter 
all too perspicacious a judge of men and politics. Civil war was 
an abomination. Victory could only be won by adopting the 
adversary’s weapons; and victory no less than defeat would be 
fatal to everything that an honest man and a patriot valued. 
But Brutus was far away. 

Winter held up warfare in the north, with leisure for grim re¬ 
flections. When Hirtius brought to completion the commentaries 
of Caesar, he confessed that he could see no end to civil strife. 1 
Men recalled not Caesar only but Lepidus and armies raised in 
the name of liberty, the deeds of Pompeius, and a Brutus besieged 
at Mutina. There was no respite: at Rome the struggle was 
prosecuted, in secret intrigue and open debate, veiled under the 
name of legality, of justice, of country. 

f BU 8, praef. 2: ‘usque ad exitum non quidern civilis dissensionis, cuius 
finem nullum \ idemus, sed vitae Caesaris.’ 



XI. POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 


I N Rome of the Republic, not constrained by any law of libel, 
the literature of politics was seldom dreary, hypocritical or 
edifying. Persons, not programmes, came before the People for 
their judgement and approbation. The candidate seldom made 
promises. Instead, he claimed office as a reward, boasting loudly 
of ancestors or, failing that prerogative, of his own merits. 
Again, the law-courts were an avenue for political advancement 
through prosecution, a battle-ground for private enmities and 
political feuds, a theatre for oratory. The best of arguments was 
personal abuse. In the allegation of disgusting immorality, de¬ 
grading pursuits and ignoble origin the Roman politician knew 
no compunction or limit. Hence the alarming picture of con¬ 
temporary society revealed by oratory, invective and lampoon. 

Crime, vice and corruption in the last age of the Republic are 
embodied in types as perfect of their kind as are the civic and 
moral paragons of early days; which is fitting, for the evil and the 
good are both the fabrication of skilled literary artists. Catilina 
is the perfect monster—murder and debauchery of every degree. 
Clodius inherited his policy and his character; and Clodia com¬ 
mitted incest with her brother and poisoned her husband. The 
enormities of P. Vatinius ranged from human sacrifices to the 
wearing of a black toga at a banquet. 1 Piso and Gabinius were a 
brace of vultures, rapacious and obscene. 2 Piso to public view 
seemed all eyebrows and antique gravity. What dissimulation, 
what inner turpitude and nameless orgies within four walls! As 
domestic chaplain and preceptor in vice, Piso hired an Epicurean 
philosopher, and, corrupting the corrupt, compelled him to write 
indecent verses. 3 This at Rome: in his province lust was.matched 
with cruelty. Virgins of the best families at Byzantium cast them¬ 
selves down wells to escape the vile proconsul ; 4 and the blameless 
chieftains of Balkan tribes, loyal allies of the Roman People, were 
foully done to death. 5 Piso’s colleague Gabinius curled his hair, 
gave exhibitions of dancing at fashionable dinner-parties and 
brutally impeded the lawful occupations of important Roman 

1 Cicero, In Vatinium 14; 30. 

2 ‘ Vulturii paludati’ (Pro Sestio 71). Cf. thespeechesof the years 57 -5511.0.,passim. 
3 In Pisonem 68 ff.; cf. Or. post red. in senatu 14 f. 

4 De prov. cons. 6. 

4482 


F 


5 In Pisonem 84. 



I 5 0 POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 

financiers in Syria. 1 Marcus Antoniuswasnot merely a ruffian and 
a gladiator, a drunkard and a debauchee—he was effeminate and 
a coward. Instead of fighting at Caesar's side in Spain, he lurked 
at Rome. How different was gallant young Dolabella! 2 The 
supreme enormity—Antonius, by demonstrative affection towards 
his own wife, made a mock of Roman decorum and decency. 3 

There were more damaging charges than mere vice in Roman 
public life—the lack of ancestors, the taint of trade or the stage, 
the shame of municipal origin. On the paternal side, the great¬ 
grandfather of Octavianus was a freedman, a rope-maker; on the 
maternal, a sordid person of native African extraction, a baker or 
seller of perfumes at Aricia. 4 As for Piso, his grandfather did not 
come from the ancient colony of Placentia at all—it was Mediola- 
nium, and he was an Insubrian Gaul exercising the ill-famed pro¬ 
fession of auctioneer : 5 or stay, worse than that, he had immigrated 
thither from the land of trousered Gauls beyond the Alps. 0 

The exigencies of an advocate’s practice or the fluctuations of 
personal and party allegiance produce startling conflicts of testi¬ 
mony and miraculous metamorphoses of character. Catilina was 
not a monster after all: a blended and enigmatic individual, he 
possessed many virtues, which for a time had deceived excellent 
and unsuspecting persons, including Cicero himself. 7 So the 
orator, when defending Caelius the wayward and fashionable 
youth. The speeches in defence of Vatinius and Gabinius have 
not been preserved. One learns, however, that the strange garb 
of Vatinius was merely the badge of devout but harmless Pythago¬ 
rean practices; 8 and Gabinius had once been called a ‘vir fortis’, 
a pillar of Rome’s empire and honour. 9 L. Piso, for his stand 
against Antonius, acquires the temporary label of a good citizen, 
only to lapse before long, damned for a misguided policy of 
conciliation; and casual evidence reveals the fact that Piso’s 
Epicurean familiar was no other than the unimpeachable Philode- 
mus from Gadara, a town in high repute for literature and learn¬ 
ing. 10 Antonius had attacked Dolabella, alleging acts of adultery. 

1 Or. post red . in senatu 13 ; De prov. cons. 9 ff. 2 Phil. 2, 74 f. 

3 lb. 2, 77. 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 4 (allegations made by Antonius and by Cassius of 

Parma). 5 In Pisonem , fr. 11 —- Asconius 4 (p. 5, Clark). 

6 In Pisonem , fr. 10 = Asconius 3 (p. 4, Clark). 

7 Pro Caelio 12 ff. 

B According to the Schol. Bob. on In Vat. 14 (p. 146, St.), Cicero made handsome 
amends in the Pro Vatinio. v De imp. Cn. Pompei 52; 57. 

10 lb. 14 (p. 16, Clark). Cicero himself describes the Epicureans, Siro and 
Philodemus, as ‘cum optimos viros, turn homines doctissimos’ (De finibus 2, 119). 



POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 151 

Shameless and wicked lie! 1 A few months pass and Dolabella, by 
changing his politics, betrays his true colours, as detestable as 
Antonius. From youth he had revelled in cruelty: such had been 
his lusts that no modest person could mention them. 2 

In the professed ideals of a landed aristocracy earned wealth 
was sordid and degrading. But if the enterprise and the profits 
are large enough, bankers and merchants may be styled the flower 
of society, the pride of the Empire: 3 they earn a dignitas of their 
own and claim virtues above their station, even the magnitudo 
animi of the governing class. 4 5 6 Municipal origin becomes not 
merely respectable but even an occasion for just pride—why we 
all come from the municipial 5 Likewise the foreigner. Decidius 
Saxa is derided as a wild Celtiberian:° he was a partisan of 
Antonius. Had he been on the right side, he would have been 
praised no less than that man from Gades, the irreproachable 
Balbus. Would that all good men and champions of Rome’s 
empire might become her citizens! Where a man came from did 
not matter at all at Rome—it had never mattered! 7 

From the grosser forms of abuse and misrepresentation the 
hardy tribe of Roman politicians soon acquired immunity. They 
were protected by long familiarity, by a sense of humour, or by 
skill at retaliation. Certain charges, believed or not, became 
standard jests, treasured by friends as well as enemies. Ventidius 
was called a muleteer: 8 the fullest elaboration on that theme 
belongs to a time when it could do him no harm. 9 Nor was it 
Caesar’s enemies but his beloved soldiery who devised the appro¬ 
priate songs of licence at Caesar’s triumph. 10 

The victims of invective did not always suffer discredit or 
damage. On the contrary. The Romans possessed a feeling for 

1 Phil. 2, 99. 2 lb. 11, 9. 

3 De officiis 1, 150 f. is instructive: if business men retire and buy land they 

become quite respectable. 

4 Pro C. Rabirio Postumo 3 f. and 43 f. 

5 Phil. 3, 15: ‘videte quam despiciamur omnes qui sumus e municipiis, id est 
omnes plane: quotus enim quisque nostrum non est?* 

6 lb. 11, 12; 13, 27. 7 Pro Balbo 51. 

8 Adfam. 10, 18, 3 (Plancus); Pliny, NH 7, 135 (Cicero). 

9 Gellius (15, 4, 3) quotes the popular verses: 

concurrite omnes augures, haruspices! 
portentum inusitatum conflatum est recens: 
nam mulas qui fricabat, consul factus est. 

10 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 51: 

urbani, servate uxores, moechum calvum adducimus. 
aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hie sumpsisti mutuum. 



i 5 2 POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 

humour and a strong sense of the dramatic; and Cicero enjoyed 
among contemporaries an immense reputation as a wit and as a 
humourist. Cato had to acknowledge it. 1 The politician Vati- 
nius could give as good as he got—he seems to have borne Cicero 
no malice for the speech In Vatinium . 2 It was a point of honour 
in a liberal society to take these things gracefully. Caesar was 
sensitive to slander: but he requited Catullus for lampoons of 
unequalled vigour and indecency by inviting the poet to dinner. 3 
Freedom of speech was an essential part of the Republican virtue 
of libertas, to be regretted more than political freedom when 
both were abolished. For the sake of peace and the common good, 
all power had to pass to one man. That was not the worst feature 
of monarchy—it was the growth of servility and adulation. 

Men practised, however, a more subtle art of misrepresenta¬ 
tion, which, if it could not deceive the hardened adept at the game 
of Roman politics, none the less might influence the innocent 
or the neutral. Merely to accuse one’s opponents of aiming at 
regnum or dominatio —that was too simple, too crude. It had all 
been heard before: but it might be hard to resist the deceitful 
assertions of a party who claimed to be the champions of 
liberty and the laws, of peace and legitimate government. That 
was precisely the question at Rome—where and what was the 
legitimate authority that could demand the unquestioning loy¬ 
alty of all good citizens ? 

Rome had an unwritten constitution: that is to say, according 
to the canons of Greek political thought, no constitution at all. 
This meant that a revolution could be carried through without 
any violation of legal and constitutional form. The Principate 
of Augustus was justified by the spirit, and fitted to the fabric, 
of the Roman constitution: no paradox, but the supreme and 
authentic revelation of what each was worth. 

The realities of Roman politics were overlaid with a double 
coating of deceit, democratic and aristocratic. In theory, the 
People was ultimately sovran, but the spirit of the constitution 
was held to be aristocratic. In fact, oligarchy ruled through con¬ 
sent and prescription. There were two principles of authority, 
in theory working in harmony, the libertas of the People and the 
auctoritas of the Senate: either of them could be exploited in 
politics, as a source of power or as a plea in justification. 

1 Plutarch, Cato minor 21 : coy yeXolov vnarov eyofiev. 

2 Cf. the friendly and humorous letter many years later, Ad Jam. 5, 10a. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 73. 



POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 153 

The auctoritas of the Senate was naturally managed in the 
interests of the party in possession. Further, the discretionary 
power of the Senate, in its tendering of advice to magistrates, 
was widened to cover a declaration that there was a state of 
emergency, or that certain individuals by their acts had placed 
themselves in the position of public enemies. A popularis could 
contest the misuse of this prerogative, but not its validity. 1 

The Romans believed that they were a conservative people, 
devoted to the worship of law and order. The advocates of 
change therefore appealed, not to reform or progress, not to 
abstract right and abstract justice, but to something called mos 
maiorum. This was not a code of constitutional law, but a vague 
and emotional concept. It was therefore a subject of partisan 
interpretation, of debate and of fraud: almost any plea could 
triumph by an appeal to custom or tradition. 

Knowledge of the vocabulary of Roman political life derives 
in the main from the speeches of Cicero. On the surface, what 
could be more clear than his categories and his ‘values’—‘good’ 
citizens and ‘bad’, libertas populi , auctoritas senatus , concordia 
ordinum , consensus Italiae ? A cool scrutiny will suggest doubts: 
these terms are very far from corresponding with definite parties 
or definite policies. They are rather ‘ideals’, to which lip-service 
was inevitably rendered. Not, indeed, a complete emptiness of 
content in this political eloquence. The boni , after all, did exist 
—the propertied classes; and it was presumably in their interests 
that an alliance between the wealthiest members of the two 
orders, Senate and knights, should withstand the People, main¬ 
tain the rights of property and avert revolution. Further, it was 
an attractive theory that the conduct of affairs in Rome should 
not be narrowly Roman, but commend itself to the sentiment 
and interests of Italy as a whole. An aspiration rather than a 
programme. If the political literature of the period had been 
more abundantly preserved, it might be discovered that respect 
for law, tradition and the constitution possessed a singular 
unanimity of advocates; that phrases like concordia ordinum and 
consensus Italiae were no peculiar monopoly of Cicero, no unique 
revelation of patriotism and political sagacity. 

It was easier to formulate an ideal than a policy. The defen¬ 
ders of the Senate’s rule and prerogative were not, it is true, 
merely a narrow ring of brutal and unenlightened oligarchs. 
Again, there were to be found honest men and sincere reformers 

1 Compare Caesar’s remarks (BC 1 , 7, 5f.). 



154 POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 

among the champions of the People’s rights- -but hardly the 
belief and conviction that popular sovranty was a good thing in 
itself. Once in power, the popularis , were he Pompeius or were 
he Caesar, would do his best to curb the dangerous and ana¬ 
chronistic liberties of the People. That was the first duty of every 
Roman statesman. 

There is a melancholy truth in the judgement of the historian 
Sallustius. After Pompeius and Crassus had restored the power 
of the tribunate, Roman politicians, whether they asserted the 
People’s rights or the Senate’s, were acting a pretence: they 
strove for power only. 1 Sallustius soon went deeper in his pessi¬ 
mism. The root of the trouble lay a century back, after the fall 
of Carthage, Rome’s last rival for world-empire. Since then a 
few ambitious individuals exploited the respectable names of 
Senate and People as a mask for personal domination. The 
names of good citizens and bad became partisan appellations; 
wealth and the power to do harm gave to the champions of the 
existing order the advantage of nomenclature. 2 

The political cant of a country is naturally and always most 
strongly in evidence on the side of vested interests. In times of 
peace and prosperity it commands a wide measure of acquiescence, 
even of belief. Revolution rends the veil. But the Revolution did 
not impede or annul the use of political fraud at Rome. On the 
contrary, the vocabulary was furbished up and adapted to a more 
modern and deadly technique. As commonly in civil strife and 
class-war, the relation between words and facts was inverted. 3 
Party-denominations prevailed entirely, and in the end success or 
failure became the only criterion of wisdom and of patriotism. 4 
In the service of faction the fairest of pleas and the noblest of 
principles were assiduously enlisted. The art was as old as politics, 
its exponents required no mentors. The purpose of propaganda 
was threefold—to win an appearance of legality for measures of 
violence, to seduce the supporters of a rival party and to stampede 
the neutral or non-political elements. 

First in value come freedom and orderly government, without 

1 BC 38, 3: ‘bonum publicum simulantes pro sua quisquc potentia certabant.’ 

2 Hist. 1, 12 m : ‘bonique et mali cives appellati non ob merita in rem publicam 
omnibus pariter corruptis, sed uti quisque locupletissimus et iniuria validior, 
quia praesentia defendebat, pro bono ducebatur.’ 

3 Thucydides 3, 82, 3 : /cat ttjv eltodviav d^uxjoiv tujv ovopidrcov €? r a epya dvrrjX- 
Aa£av rfj St/catd/ortt. 

4 Dio 46, 34, 5 (with reference to 44 43 B.c.) : ol fievydp €v 7 rpa^avres /cat cvfiovXoi 

/cat <f>iXo7r6Xi&€$ €wo^iLcr6rjoau, ol nralaavris /cat 'noXtpuoi rrjs: Trarplbos /cat aAi- 

TTjptoi wvop.dardr)oav. Like Sallust, he had studied Thucydides with some attention. 



POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 155 

the profession of which ideals no party can feel secure and 
sanguine, whatever be the acts of deception or violence in pros¬ 
pect. At Rome all men paid homage to libertas, holding it to be 
something roughly equivalent to the spirit and practice of Re¬ 
publican government. Exactly what corresponded to the Repub¬ 
lican' constitution was, however, a matter not of legal definition 
but of partisan interpretation. Libertas is a vague and negative 
notion—freedom from the rule of a tyrant or a faction. 1 It follows 
that liber tas, like rcgnum or dominatio, is a convenient term of 
political fraud. Libertas was most commonly invoked in defence 
of the existing order by individuals or classes in enjoyment of 
power and wealth. The libertas of the Roman aristocrat meant 
the rule of a class and the perpetuation of privilege. 

Yet, even so, libertas could not be monopolized by the oligarchy 
—or by any party in power. It was open to their opponents to 
claim and demonstrate that a gang (or factio), in control for the 
moment of the legitimate government, was oppressing the Re¬ 
public and exploiting the constitution in its own interests. 
Hence the appeal to liberty. It was on this plea that the young 
Pompeius raised a private army and rescued Rome and Italy 
from the tyranny of the Marian party; 2 and Caesar the procon¬ 
sul, trapped by Pompeius and the oligarchs, turned his arms 
against the government ‘in order to liberate himself and the 
Roman People from the domination of a faction’. 3 

The term was not novel. Nobody ever sought power for himself 
and the enslavement of others without invoking libertas and such 
fair names. 4 In the autumn of 44 B.c. Caesar’s heir set forth to 
free Rome from the tyranny of the consul Antonius. 5 His ultimate 
triumph found its consecration in the legend Libertatis p. R . 
Vindex; b and centuries later when the phrase Vindex Libertatis 
appears on the coinage, it indicates armed usurpation attempted 
or successful, the removal of either a pretender or a tyrant. 7 

1 Cf. H. Kloesel, Libertas (Diss. Breslau, 1935). 

2 Bell. Afr. 22, 2: ‘p aene oppressam funditus et deletam Italiam urbemque 
Romanam in libertatem vindicavit.’ 

3 Caesar, BC 22, 5 : ‘ut se ct populum Romanum factione paucorum oppressum 
in libertatem vindicaret.’ 

4 Tacitus, Hist. 4, 73: ‘ceterum libertas et speciosa nomina praetexuntur; nec 
quisquam alienum servitium et dominationem sibi concupivit ut non eadem ista 
vocabula usurparet.’ 

5 Res Gestae 1: ‘annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata 
impensa comparavi, per quern rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in 
libertatem vindicavi.’ 

6 BMC, R. Emp. 1, 112. 

7 Cf. A. Alfdldi, Zeitschr. fur Num. XL (1928), 1 ff. 



156 political catchwords 

It is the excuse of the revolutionary that the Republic has 
succumbed to tyranny or to anarchy, it is his ideal to bring back 
order again. The decisive act in a policy of treason may be 
described as ‘laying the foundations of settled government'; and 
the crown of the work is summed up in the claim that the Free 
State has been ‘preserved', ‘established' or ‘restored'. 

Next to freedom and legitimate government comes peace, a 
cause which all parties professed with such contentious zeal that 
they were impelled to civil strife. The non-party govern¬ 
ment of March 17th, 44 B.e., was inaugurated under the auspices 
of concord and appeasement. It therefore became a reproach to 
be ‘afraid of peace’, to be ‘enemies of peace’. 1 In detestation of 
civil war, Republicans might honestly hold an unjust peace to be 
better than the justest of wars. Then the fair name lost credit. So 
much talk was there of peace and concord in the revolutionary 
period that a new term makes its appearance, the word ‘pacifica- 
torius’ : 2 not in a favourable sense. The word ‘pacificator’ already 
had a derisive ring. 3 

The friends of peace had to abandon their plea when they 
spoke for war. Peace should not be confused with servitude; 4 
negotiations with an enemy must be spurned because they were 
dangerous as well as dishonourable 5 —they might impair the 
resolution of the patriotic front. 6 Then war became just and 
heroic: rather than seek any accommodation with a citizen in 
arms, any hope or guarantee of concord, it is better to fight and 
to fall, as becomes a Roman and a Senator. 7 

In open war the language of peace and goodwill might still 
suitably be employed to seduce the allies or adherents of the 
opposing party. To establish concord among citizens, the most 
dishonest of political compacts and the most flagrant treacheries 
were gaily consummated; and devotion to the public good was 
supported by the profession of private virtues, if such they should 


1 Ad Att. 14, 2i, 2; 15, 2, 3 (‘timere otium’). 

2 Phil. 12, 3. 

1 Ad Att. 15,7 (used of Ser. Sulpicius Rufus). Cf. also ‘ista pacificatio’ (Cicero to 
Lepidus, Adfam. io, 27, 2, below, p. 173). 

4 Phil. 2, 113: ‘ct nomen pads dulce est et ipsa res salutaris; sed inter pacem et 
servitutem plurimum interest/ 

5 lb. 7, <): ‘cur igitur pacem nolo? quia turpis est, quia periculosa, quia esse 
non potest/ 

6 lb. 13, 1 : ‘timui nc condicio insidiosa pads libertatis recuperandae studia 
restingueret/ 

7 lb. 7, 14: ‘dicam quod dignum est et senatore et Romano homine— 
moriamur/ 




POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 157 

be called, being not so much ethical qualities as standards of an 
order in society or labels of political allegiance. Virtus itself 
stands at the peak of the hierarchy, transcending mores . 

Roman political factions were welded together, less by unity of 
principle than by mutual interest and by mutual services ( officia ), 
either between social equals as an alliance, or from inferior to 
superior, in a traditional and almost feudal form of clientship: on a 
favourable estimate the bond was called amicitia, otherwise factio. 1 ' 
Such alliances either presupposed or provoked the personal feud— 
which, to a Roman aristocrat, was a sacred duty or an occasion of 
just pride. 

The family was older than the State; and the family was the 
kernel of a Roman political faction. Loyalty to the ties of kinship 
in politics was a supreme obligation, often imposing inexpiable 
vendettas. Hence the role of the words ‘pius’ and ‘pietas’ in the 
revolutionary wars. Pietas was the battle-cry of the Pompeians in 
the last battle in Spain: 2 and the younger son of Pompeius 
took a cognomen that symbolized his undying devotion to the 
cause, calling himself ‘Magnus Pompeius Pius’. 3 Caesar’s son 
showed his pietas by pursuing the blood-feud and insisting on 
vengeance, 4 whereas the disloyal Antonius was ready to com¬ 
promise with the assassins of his leader and benefactor. Pietas 
and a state of public emergency was the excuse for sedition. But 
the Antonii at least kept faith among themselves: the younger 
brother Lucius added Pietas to his name as the most convincing 
demonstration of political solidarity. 5 

Men of honour obeyed the call of duty and loyalty, even to the 
extremity of civil war. Among Caesar’s allies Pollio was not the 
only one who followed the friend but cursed the cause. The 
continuance and complications of internecine strife, however, 
played havoc with the most binding ties of personal allegiance. 
For profit or for safety it might be necessary to change sides. 
Suitable terminology was available. The dissolution of one 
alliance and the formation of another was justified by good sense 
—to acquire new friends without losing the old; or by lofty 

1 Sallust, BJ 31, 15: ‘sed hacc inter bonos amicitia, inter malos factio est.’ 

2 Appian, BC 2, 104, 430 (Evadge ta). 

3 BMC , R. Rep. II, 370 ff.; also the inscr., ILS 8891. 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 9: ‘pietate erga parentem et necessitudine rei publicae, in 
qua nullus tunc legibus locus, ad arma civilia actum’; cf. ib. 1, io, where it is 
described as a fraudulent pretext. 

5 Dio 48, 5, 4: 8ta yap rrjv rrpos rov adeX<f>ov evardficlav /cat dnajvvfJLLav iairrcp 
TlUrav inddero. He struck coins with his brother’s head on the obverse, on the 
reverse the legend ‘Pietas Cos.’ (BMC, R. Rep. 11, 400 ff.). 



158 POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 

patriotism—private enmities should be composed, private loyalties 
surrendered, for the public good. Cicero had descended to that 
language years before when he explained the noble motives that 
induced him to waive his hostility against the rulers of Rome, 
Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar. 1 The dynast Pompeius sacri¬ 
ficed his ally Caesar to the oligarchs out of sheer patriotism. 2 
Octavianus, to secure recognition and power, was ready to pos- 
pone for the moment a sacred vendetta: his sincere love of 
country w ; as loudly acclaimed. 3 

This austere devotion to the Commonwealth excited emulation 
among the generals of the western provinces when they decided 
to desert the government, making common cause with a public 
enemy. Lepidus duly uttered the exemplary prayer that private 
feuds should be abandoned. 4 Plancus had assured Cicero that no 
personal grounds of enmity would ever prevent him from allying 
with his bitterest enemy to save the State. 5 Plancus soon followed 
the unimpeachable example of the patriotic Lepidus, in word no 
doubt as w'ell as in deed; Pollio likewise, though not an adept at 
smooth language. 

Political intrigue in times of peace played upon all the arts of 
gentle persuasion to convert an opponent, to make him‘see reason’ 
and join the ‘better side’. 6 In the heat of civil passion the task of 
the apostle of concord was not always easy when he had to deal with 
enemies w r hom he had described as ‘madmen’, ‘raging brigands’ 
or ‘parricides’. 7 It would be necessary to ‘bring them to their 
right minds again’. Plancus was an adept. Years before in 
Caesar’s Civil War he had spontaneously offered his good offices to 
bring a Pompeian general to his senses. 8 The soldiers were often 
more accessible to appeals to reason than were the generals who 

1 De prov. cons. 20 (ef. 47): ‘quid? si ipsas inimicitias depono rei publicae 
causa, quis me tandem iure reprehendet V Cicero explains that he was not really, 
despite appearances, an ‘mimicus’ of Caesar. 

z Caesar, BC 1, 8, 3: ‘semper se rei publicae commoda privatis necessitudinibus 
habuisse potiora/ 

3 Phil. 5, 50: ‘omnis Caesar inimicitias rei publicae condonavit.’ Tacitus 
suitably and spitefully recalls this phraseology—‘sane Cassii et Brutorum exitus 
paternis inimicitiis datos, quamquam fas sit privata odia publicis utilitatibus 
remittere’ (Ann. 1, 10). 

4 Ad fam. 10, 35, 2: ‘ut privatis offensionibus omissis summae rei p. consulatis* 
(i.e. especially Cicero’s feud against Antonius), 

5 lb. 10, 11,3 : ‘non me impedient privatae offensiones quo minus pro rei p. salute 
etiam cum inimicissimo consentiam.’ 

6 Ad Att. 14, 20, 4: ‘Hirtium per me meliorem fieri volunt’; 15, 5, 1: ‘orat ac 
petit ut Hirtium quarn optimum faciam.’ 

7 ‘Ferventes latrones’ and ‘parricidae’ (Ad jam. io, 23, 3 and 5); ‘furor’ (ib. 5). 

8 Bell. Afr. 4, t: ‘si posset aliqua ratione perduci ad sanitatem.’ 




POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 159 

led them: salutary compulsion from the army would then be 
needed to transform a brigand and murderer into a high-minded 
champion of concord and the Commonwealth. 

The legionaries at least were sincere. From personal loyalty 
they might follow great leaders like Caesar or Antonius: they 
had no mind to risk their lives for intriguers such as Plancus or 
Lepidus, still less for liberty and the constitution, empty names. 
Roman discipline, inexorable in the wars of the State, had been 
entirely relaxed. The soldiers, whether pressed into service or 
volunteers from poverty and the prospect of pay and loot, re¬ 
garded loyalty to their leaders as a matter of their own choice and 
favour. 1 Treachery was commended by the example of their 
superiors; and the plea of patriotism was all-embracing—surely 
they could help the State on whichever side they stood. 2 

The conversion of a military leader might sometimes have to 
be enforced, or at least accelerated, by the arguments of a common 
humanity. Caesar began it, invoking clemency, partly to dis¬ 
credit by contrast and memories of Sulla his Sullan enemies, 
partly to palliate the guilt of civil war. Almost at once he com¬ 
posed a propaganda-letter, addressed to Balbus and Oppius but 
destined for wider circulation: the gist of it was to announce a 
new style of ending a civil war—clemency and generosity. 3 
When the tide of battle turned on the field of Pharsalus, the 
Caesarians passed round the watchword ‘parce civibus\ 4 It was 
repeated and imitated in twenty years of civil war. Zealous to 
avoid the shedding of Roman blood, generals and soldiers ex¬ 
alted disloyalty into a solemn duty. Lepidus’ army compelled 
him, so he explained in his despatch to the Senate, to plead for 
the lives and safety of a great multitude of Roman citizens. 5 
Other campaigns were curtailed in this humane and salubrious 
fashion: seven years later the plea of Lepidus recoiled upon his 

1 Appian, BC 5, 17, 69: ovre cnpareveaBat vop.i^ovoL fiaWov 7} fiorjdeiv ot/ceta 
Xapin Kai yvu>p, 7 ). 

2 lb. 5, 17, 71 : rj re Ttvv <rrparryyu)v vnoKpuns ^ua, arravrojv es ra avpL<f>e~ 
povra rfj rrarptSi ftorjdovvrcov, evyepecrrepovs enoLei npos rrjv pL€Ta( 3 oArjv uts vaurayov 
tt} varpLhi fioT) 6 oVVTCLS . 

3 Ad Att. 9, 7c, 1 : ‘haec nova sit ratio vincendi ut miscricordia et liberalitate 
nos muniamus.’ 

4 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 75, 2. 

5 Ad Jam. 10, 35, 1: ‘nam exercitus cunctus consuetudinem suam in civibus 
conservandis communique pace seditione facta retinuit meque tantae multitudinis 
civium Romanorum salutis atque incolumitatis causam suscipere, ut vere dicam, 
coegit.’ He urged that ‘misericordia’ should not be regarded as criminal. Cf. 
Appian, BC 3, 84, 345 (clearly following an excellent source): elpijvrjv re Kai eXeov 
es arvyovuras noXtras. 



160 POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 

own head. After the end of all the wars the victor proclaimed that 
he had killed no citizen who had asked for mercy: 1 * his clemency 
was published on numerous coins with the legend Ob cives 
servatos . 1 

There was no limit to the devices of fraudulent humanitarians 
or high-minded casuists. The party in control of the govern¬ 
ment could secure sanction for almost any arbitrary act: at the 
worst, a state of public emergency or a ‘higher legality' could be 
invented. Only the first steps need be hazardous. A proconsul in 
defence of honour, when trapped by his enemies, invokes the pro¬ 
tection of his army. A youth inspired by heroism levies an army 
for himself. So Caesar and Pompeius, the precedents for Caesar’s 
heir. When an adventurer raised troops in Italy on his own 
initiative, privato consilio , it was claimed that the Senate could 
at once legalize treason, condoning the private act through publica 
auctoritas ; 3 the bribery of the troops of the Roman State w T as coolly 
described as the generous investment of a patrimony for the public 
good; 4 when the legions of a consul deserted, it was taken to 
prove that the consul was not a consul. 5 The author of this 
audacious proposal represented it to be nothing less than ‘laying 
the foundations of constitutional government’. 6 

Again, when private individuals seize provinces and armies, 
the higher legality is expressly invoked—‘the ordinance enacted 
by Heaven itself, namely that all things advantageous for the 
State are right and lawful’. 7 Extraordinary commands were 
against the spirit of the constitution 8 —but they might be neces¬ 
sary to save the State. Of that the Senate was supreme judge. 
What if it had not lent its sanction ? Why, true patriots were their 
own Senate. 9 

It is evident that res publica constituta or libertas restituta lend 
themselves as crown and consecration to any process of violence 
and usurpation. But liberty, the laws and the constitution were 

1 Res Gestae 2. 2 BMC , R. Emp. 1, 29. 

3 Phil. 3 and 5, passim. 

4 lb. 3,3: ‘non enim effudit: in salute rei publicae conlocavit.' 

5 lb. 3, 6, cf. 4, 9. 

6 lb. 5, 30: ‘ieci sententia mea maximo vestro consensu fundamenta rei 

publicae.’ 

7 lb. 11, 28 (on Brutus and Cassius): ‘qua lege, quo iure? eo quod Iuppiter 
ipse sanxit, ut omnia quae rei publicae salutaria essent legitima et iusta haberentur.’ 

8 lb. 11, 17: ‘nam extraordinarium imperium populare atque ventosum est, 
minime nostrae gravitatis, minime huius ordinis.’ 

9 lb. 11, 27: ‘nam et Brutus et Cassius multis iam in rebus ipse sibi senatus 
fuit.’ 



POLITICAL CATCHWORDS 161 

not everything. A leader or a party might find that the constitu¬ 
tion was being perversely invoked against them: what if the People 
should appear misguided in the use of its prerogative of libertas , 
the Senate unreliable, unpatriotic or unrepresentative? There 
was a remedy. The private enterprise of citizens, banded together 
for the good of the Commonwealth, might then organize opinion 
in Italy so as to exert unofficial pressure on the government. This 
was called a consensus : the term coniuratio is more revealing. If 
it was thought inexpedient for the moment—or even outworn 
and superfluous—to appeal to constitutional sanctions in carrying 
out a political mandate, a wider appeal thus lay ready to hand. 
All the phrases, all the weapons were there: when the constitu¬ 
tion had perished, the will of Army and People could be expressed, 
immediate and imperative. 

For the present, however, legitimate authority still commanded 
respect, and the traditional phrases were useful and necessary— 
had not the Republic been rescued from tyranny and restored 
to vigour? Octavianus had the veterans, the plebs and the name 
of Caesar: his allies in the Senate would provide the rest. 



XII. THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 


T HE Senate met on December 20th, convened by tribunes on 
the specious pretext of taking precautions in advance for the 
personal safety of the new consuls on the first day of the year, 
when momentous transactions were announced—as though any 
individual or party wished to strike down that worthy and innocu¬ 
ous pair, Hirtius and Pansa. The true cause was probably an 
urgent dispatch from the governor of Cisalpine Gaul. 

Though nothing could be done while Antonius was still consul, 
Cicero seized the chance to develop a programme for future 
action. Octavianus had no standing at all before the law, and 
Brutus was insecure. Antonius was patently in the right when 
summoning him to surrender the province. That point Cicero 
could not dispute. He therefore had resort to the most impudent 
sophistries, delivering a solemn and patriotic panegyric upon 
treason. 1 He demonstrated that if a private army was raised 
against Antonius, if his troops were mutinous and seditious, 
Antonius could be no true consul of the Roman People. On the 
other hand, the adversaries of Antonius deserved full recogni¬ 
tion, the soldiery recompense in land and money. 

The claim urged for D. Brutus might perhaps be defended: 
he was at least a magistrate and held his province through legal 
provisions, namely the acta of Caesar the Dictator. But what of 
the official recognition of Caesars heir? Senators could recall 
how twenty years before a consul had secured the execution of 
Roman citizens without trial on the plea of public emergency 
and the charge of levying armed forces against the State. Now 
the champion of the constitution had become the ally of a Cati- 

1 Phil. 3. In a speech to the People on the same day he states: ‘deinceps 
laudatur provmcia Gallia meritoque omatur verbis amplissimis ab senatu quod 
resistat Antonio, quem si consulem ilia provincia putaret neque eum reciperet, 
magno scelere se astringeret: omnes enim in consulis iure et imperio debent esse 
provinciae’ (ib. 4, 9). But was that the point? The fact that Cicero uses this 
argument to demonstrate that Antonius is not really a consul at all should excite 
suspicion. The conception of a consul's imperium maius here stated is rather 
antiquarian in character, to say the least. In neither of these speeches does Cicero 
mention Antonius’ legal title to Gallia Cisalpina, namely the plebiscite of June 1st. 
Explicitly or not, that law may have permitted him to take over the province before 
the end of his consular year. Nothing extraordinary in that. Compare, in the next 
year, what P. Lentulus says {Ad Jam. 12, 14, 5): ‘qua re non puto Pansam et 
Hirtium in consulatu properaturos in provincias exire sed Romae acturos 
consulatum.’ 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 163 

lina, invoking on the side of insurgents the authority of the 
Senate and the liberty of the People. Cicero spoke before the 
People as well as in the Curia . 1 There he boldly inverted the 
protests of Antonius: Antonius, he said, was an assassin, a 
brigand, a Spartacus. He must be crushed and would be 
crushed, as once Senate, People and Cicero had dealt with 
Catilina. 

In brief, Cicero proposed to secure legitimation, publica auctori- 
tas y for the privatum consilium , the illicit ventures of Octavianus 
and D. Brutus. This meant usurpation of power by the Senate 
—or rather, by a faction in the Senate—and war against the 
proconsul Antonius. That prospect was cheerfully envisaged. 
What resources might be enlisted for the struggle ? 

The authority of the Senate was now to be played against the 
People and the army commanders. As at present composed, 
with its preponderance of Caesarians or neutrals, the Senate 
was prone to inertia, a treacherous instrument if cajoled or co¬ 
erced into action. It showed a lack of personal energy as well as 
of social distinction. 

There was no Fabius now of consular rank, no Valerius, no 
Claudius . 2 Of the Cornelii, whose many branches had produced 
the Scipiones and the Lentuli, along with Sulla and Cinna, the 
leading member was now the youthful consul P. Cornelius Dola- 
bella; and of all the patricians, primacy in rank and standing 
went to M. Aemilius Lepidus. Like the patriciate, the great 
houses of the plebeian aristocracy, the backbone of Sulla’s oli¬ 
garchy, were sadly weakened, with no consular Metelli left alive, 
no Licinii or Junii. Nor could the survivors of the Marcelli, 
Marcii and Calpurnii make a firm bid for leadership in the 
Commonwealth. 

Two political groups were conspicuously absent from the 
Senate that fought against Antonius. The assassins of Caesar had 
left Italy, and the young men of the faction of Cato, the sons of 
the dominant consulars in the defeated oligarchy, departed with 
their kinsman and leader M. Junius Brutus, whether or no they 
had been implicated in the Ides of March. Like Brutus himself, 
many of these nobiles had abandoned the cause of Pompeius after 
Pharsalus. Not so the personal adherents of the dynast, fanati¬ 
cally loyal to the claims of pietas . Thapsus and Munda thinned 
their company: Afranius, Petreius and Labienus had fallen in 

1 Phil. 4. 

2 M. Valerius Messalla Rufus {cos. 53) was still alive, but took no part in politics. 



164 the senate against antonius 

battle. The remnants of the faction were with the young Pom- 
peius in Spain. 

The weakness of the Senate was flagrantly revealed in the 
persons of its leading members, the ex-consuls, whose auctoritas , 
so custom prescribed, should direct the policy of the State: they 
are suitably designated as ‘auctores publici consilii'. 1 Nowhere 
else was the havoc of the Civil Wars more evident and irreparable 
than in the ranks of the senior statesmen. Of the Pompeian 
consulars, an eminent but over-lauded group, 2 only two were 
alive at the end of 44 B.c., Cicero and Ser. Sulpicius Rufus. Nor 
had the years of Caesar's Dictatorship furnished enough consuls 
of ability and authority to fill the gaps. 3 This dearth explains the 
prominence, if not the primacy, that now at last fell to Cicero in 
his old age, after twenty years from his famous consulate, after 
twenty years of humiliation and frustration. In this December 
the total of consulars had fallen to seventeen: their effective 
strength was much less. Various in character, standing and alle¬ 
giance, as a body they revealed a marked deficiency in vigour, 
decision and authority. ‘We have been let down by the principes ’; 
such was the constant and bitter complaint of Cicero through the 
months when he clamoured for war. 4 ‘The consuls are excellent, 
the consulars a scandal.' 5 ‘The Senate is valiant, the consulars 
partly timid, partly disloyal.' 6 Worse than this, some of them 
were perverted by base emotions, by envy of Cicero's renown. 7 

Of the surviving consulars three were absent from Italy, 
Trebonius, Lepidus and Vatinius. Fourteen remained, but few 
of note in word or deed, for good or evil, in the last effort of the 
Senate. Only three, so Cicero, writing to Cassius, asserted, could be 
called statesmen and patriots—himself, L. Piso and P. Servilius. 8 
From the rest nothing was to be expected. Cicero distrusted for 
different reasons both Paullus, the brother of Lepidus, and the 
kinsmen of Octavianus, Philippus and C. Claudius Marcellus. 
Three excellent men (L. Aurelius Cotta, L. Caesar and Ser. 
Sulpicius Rufus), from age, infirmity or despair, were seldom to 

1 Adfam. 12, 2, 2. 2 Phil. 13, 29, above, p. 45. 

3 Above, p. 94. One of them, the patrician Q. Fabius Maximus (eos. 45 B.c.), 
had died in office. That left six consulars of the years 48-45. 

4 Phil. 8, 22. 5 Ad fam . 12, 4, 1. 

6 lb. 10, 28, 3. 

7 Phil. 8, 30: ‘nam illud quidem non adducor ut credam, esse quosdam qui 
invideant alicuius constantiae, qui labori, qui perpetuam in re publica adiuvanda 
voluntatem et senatui et populo Romano probari moleste ferant’; Adfam. 12, 5, 3: 
‘non nulli invident eorum laudi quos in re publica probari vident.* 

8 Adfam. 12, 5, 2, cf. Mommsen, Ges. Schriften iv, 176 ff. 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 165 

be seen in the Curia. The remaining five Cicero did not count 
as consulars at all: that is to say, they were Caesarians. His harsh 
verdict is borne out by the facts. Only one of the five was an 
obstacle to Cicero, or of service to Antonius, namely an old 
enemy, Q. Fufius Calenus, one of Caesar’s generals, a clever 
politician and an orator of some spirit. 1 

So much for Senate and senior statesmen. Without armed 
aid from the provinces, or at least loyal support from the provin¬ 
cial governors, usurpation of power at Rome was doomed to 
collapse. Gallia Cisalpina dominated Italy; and the generals in the 
West held the ultimate decision of the contest for the Cisalpina. 
Despite the assertions and the exhortations of Cicero, despite 
their own exemplary professions of loyalty to the Republic, their 
attitude was ambiguous and disquieting: it was scarcely to be 
expected that the generals and the veterans of Caesar would lend 
ready aid to the suppression of Antonius, to the revival of the 
Republican and Pompeian cause. 

In the provinces of the West stood Plancus, Lepidus and 
Pollio, Caesarian partisans all three, but diverse in character, 
attainments and standing; and all three were to survive the years 
of the Revolution, Lepidus consigned to exile and ignominy, 
Plancus a servant of the new order, honoured and despised, 
Pollio in austere independence. 

L. Munatius Plancus held Gallia Comata, consul designate for 
42 B.C., the most polished and graceful of the correspondents of 
Cicero—perhaps he indulged in mild parody of that smooth 
exemplar. Plancus, who had served as Caesar’s legate in the 
Gallic and in the Civil Wars, was the reverse of a bellicose 
character. A nice calculation of his own interests and an as¬ 
siduous care for his own safety carried him through well-timed 
treacheries to a peaceful old age. Plancus wrote dispatches and 
letters protesting love of peace and loyalty to the Republic—who 
did not ? But Plancus, it is clear, was coolly waiting upon events. 
He already possessed the reputation of a time-server. 2 

Even less reliance could be placed on M. Aemilius Lepidus, the 
governor of Gallia Narbonensis and Hispania Citerior. Where 

1 The others were C. Antonius (cos. 63), C. Caninius Rebilus (cos. suff. 45) 
and the two consuls of 53, M. Valerius Messalla Rufus, who lived on obscure and 
unrecorded (he was augur for the space of 55 years), and Cn. Domitius Calvinus, 
lost to history for thirty months after the Ides of March, but still with a future 
before him. 

2 Ad Jam. 10, 3, 3 : ‘scis profecto—nihil enim te fugere potuit—fuisse quoddam 
tempus cum homines existimarent te nimis servire temporibus.’ 



166 THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 

Lepidus stood, if the word can be used of this flimsy character, 
was with Antonius, his ally in the days following the Ides of 
March; and he will have reflected that next to Antonius he was 
the most hated of the Caesarian leaders, hated and despised for 
lack of the splendour, courage and ability that would have ex¬ 
cused his ambitions. 1 The Aemilian name, his family connexions 
and the possession of a large army turned this cipher into a factor. 
Both sides assiduously courted the favour of Lepidus, now in an 
advantageous position, for he had recently induced the adven¬ 
turer Sex. Pompeius to lay down his arms and come to terms with 
the government in Rome—a heavy blow for the Republicans. 
Antonius secured him a vote of thanks from the Senate. The 
enemies of Antonius soon entered the competition. One of the 
earliest acts of Cicero in January was to propose that, in grateful 
memory of the services of Lepidus to the Roman State, a gilded 
statue should be set up on the Rostra or in any part of the Forum 
that Lepidus should choose. Lepidus could afford to wait. 

A stronger character than either Lepidus or Plancus was C. 
Asinius Pollio in Hispania Ulterior, but his province was distant, 
his power unequal. A scholar, a wit and an honest man, a friend 
of Caesar and of Antonius but a Republican, Pollio found his 
loyalties at variance or out of date: it is pretty clear that he had no 
use for any party. He knew about them all. The pessimistic and 
clear-sighted Republican felt no confidence in a cause cham¬ 
pioned by Cicero, the pomp and insincerity of whose oratory 
he found so distasteful. But Pollio was to play his part for peace, 
if not for the Republic: his uncompromising honesty was wel¬ 
come in political negotiations where the diplomacy of a Cicero 
or a Plancus would have excited rational distrust among friends 
as well as among enemies. 

The West showed scant prospect of succour. Further, the 
armies of Africa and of Illyricum were in the hands of Caesarians. 
Macedonia had been almost completely stripped of its garrison. 
Antonius’ ally Dolabella was on his way eastwards: he had sent 
legates in advance, the one to Syria, the other to secure for him 
the legions in Egypt. Yet the East was not altogether barren of 
hope for the Republic. Of the whereabouts of the Liberators 
there was still no certain knowledge at Rome at the end of the 
year. That they would in fact not go to their trivial provinces of 
Crete and Cyrene was a fair conjecture. Rumours came from 

1 D. Brutus called him ‘homo ventosissimus’ (Ad jam, 11,9, 1); Cicero years 
before ‘iste omnium turpissimus et sordidissimus’ (Ad Att. 9, 9, 3). 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 167 

Egypt in October, but no confirmation. Winter, however, while 
delaying news, would facilitate a revolution in the East. The 
friends and relatives of Brutus and Cassius at Rome, whatever 
they knew, probably kept a discreet silence. Macedonia was 
nearer than Syria or Egypt—and Macedonia was soon to provide 
more than rumours. But there is no evidence of concerted de¬ 
sign between the Liberators and the constitutional party in 
Rome—on the contrary, discordance of policy and aim. 

The programme of Cicero had already been established and 
made public on December 20th. On January 1st came the time 
for action. Hirtius and Pansa opened the debate. It lasted for 
four days. Calenus spoke for Antonius, Cicero for war; 1 and 
L. Piso twice intervened on the plea of legality, with arguments 
for compromise. 

The result was hardly a triumph for Cicero. One point, indeed, 
he carried—the troops of D. Brutus and of Octavianus were 
converted into legitimate armies recognized by the State; the 
promises of money made by Octavianus were solemnly ratified; 
in addition, dismissal after the campaign and estates in Italy. 
It was also decided that governors should continue to hold their 
provinces until relieved by the authority of the Senate. This 
covered Brutus in the Cisalpina. As for Octavianus, Cicero, 
bringing abundant historical parallels for the honouring of youth, 
merit and patriotism, found his proposal outstripped by P. Servi- 
lius. The Senate adlected Octavianus into its ranks and assigned 
to him, along with the consuls, the direction of military opera¬ 
tions against Antonius, with the title of pro-praetor. 2 Further, 
by a special dispensation, he was to be allowed to stand for the 
consulship ten years before the legal age. Octavianus was now 
nineteen: he would still have thirteen years to wait. After this, 
the vote of a gilded statue on the motion of Philippus was a 
small thing. 

It was claimed by conservative politicians and widely admitted 
by their adversaries that in emergencies the Senate enjoyed 
special discretionary powers. The Senate had granted before 
now imperium and the charge of a war to a man who had held 
no public office. But there were limits. The Senate did not 
choose its own members, or determine their relative standing. 
On no known practice or theory could the auctoritas of the Senate 

1 Phil. 5. Something at least of Calenus* speech can be recovered from Dio 
(46, 1, 1 ff.). 

1 Res Gestae 1 ; Livy, Per. 118; Dio 46, 29, 2. For Cicero’s proposal, Phil. 5, 46. 



168 THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 

be invoked to confer senatorial rank upon a private citizen. 
It had not been done even for Pompeius. That the free vote of 
the People, and that alone, decided the choice of magistrates and 
hence entry to the Senate was a fundamental principle, whether 
democratic or aristocratic, of the Republican state. 1 

That was not the only irregularity practised by the party of 
the constitution when it ‘established the Republic upon a firm 
basis’. While consul, Antonius was clearly unassailable; when pro- 
consul, his position, though not so strong, was valid in this, that he 
held his extraordinary command in virtue of a plebiscite, as had 
both Pompeius and Caesar in the past. 2 To contest the validity 
of such grants was to raise a large question in itself, even if it 
were not coupled with the official sanction given to a private ad¬ 
venturer against a proconsul of the Roman People. 

The extreme proposal in Cicero’s programme, the outlawing of 
Antonius, violated private as well as public law. As Piso pointed 
out, perhaps with sharp reminder of the fate of the associates 
of Catilina, it would not do to condemn a Roman citizen un¬ 
heard. At the very least Antonius should be brought to trial, to 
answer for his alleged misdeeds. In the end the proposal of 
Q. Fufius Calenus, the friend of Antonius, was adopted. Pmvoys 
were to be sent to Antonius; they were to urge him to withdraw 
his army from the province of Brutus, not to advance within a 
distance of two hundred miles of Rome, but to submit to the 
authority of the government. 

This was a firm and menacing demand. For the friends of 
Antonius, however, it meant that a declaration of war had been 
averted; for the advocates of concord, a respite and time for 
negotiation. Even now the situation was not beyond all hope. 

1 Pro Sestio 137: ‘deligerentur autem in id consilium ab universo populo.’ 

2 Therefore it was legal until the legislation of Antonius (and of his agents) 
should have been declared null and void. That was not done until early in 
February. The arguments invoked by Cicero on January 1st for coolly disregarding 
the law r were by no means adequate or unequivocal (Phil. 5, 7 ff.). Firstly, the law 
violated Caesar’s Lex de provinciis , which fixed two years as the tenure of a con¬ 
sular province: but that might have been contested, for Antonius’ command was 
not a normal consular province, decreed by the Senate and hence subject to 
Caesar’s ordinance. Secondly, the law had been passed in defiance of the auspicia : 
but that plea was very weak, for the authority of sacred law had been largely 
discredited by its partisan and unscrupulous employment, and Antonius perhaps 
maintained the validity of the Lex Clodia of 58 B.c., which had virtually abolished 
this method of obstruction, cf. S. Weinstock, JRS xxvii (1937), 221. Cicero’s 
proposal to have the proconsul outlawed can hardly be described as constitutional. 
‘Eine staatsrechtliche Unmdglichkeit’, so Schwartz terms it, Hermes xxxm (1898), 
195 . 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 169 

Caesarians and neutrals alike may have expected the swift fall of 
Mutina. Against that fait accompli nothing could be done, and 
Antonius, his rights and his prestige respected, might show him¬ 
self amenable to an accommodation. Seven years before a small 
minority dominant in the Senate broke off negotiations with a 
contumacious proconsul and plunged the world into war. The 
lesson must have provided arguments against the adoption of 
irrevocable measures. 

Under the threat of war a compromise might save appearances: 
which did not meet the ideas of Cicero. That the embassy would 
fail he proclaimed in public and prayed in secret. 1 

The embassy set forth. It comprised three consulars—Piso, 
Philippus and Ser. Sulpicius, a respectable and cautious jurist 
without strong political ties or sentiments. In the north winter 
still held up military operations. At Rome politics lapsed for 
the rest of the month. But Cicero did not relent. He proclaimed 
the revival of the Senate’s authority, the loyalty of the plebs and 
the unanimity of Italy. The State now had spirit and leadership, 
armies and generals. No need for timidity or compromise. As 
for the terms that the adversary would offer, he conjectured that 
Antonius might yield the Cisalpina but cling to Gallia Comata. 2 
Deceptive and dangerous—there could be no treating with 
Antonius, for Antonius was in effect a public enemy and beyond 
the law. Cicero himself had always been an advocate of peace. 
But this was different—a just and holy war. Thus to the Senate: 
to Octavianus and to D. Brutus, letters of exhortation. 

The war needed men and money, vigour and enthusiasm. 
Levies were held. Hirtius, though rising weak and emaciated 
from his bed of sickness, set out for the seat of war and marched 
up the Flaminia to Ariminum—but not to fight if he could avoid it. 
He might yet baffle both Cicero and Antonius. But he could not 
arrest the mobilization. Patriotism and private ambition, in¬ 
timidation, fraud and bribery w r ere already loose in the land. 
All Italy must rally for the defence of the ‘legitimate govern¬ 
ment’: attempts were therefore made to engineer a spontaneous 
consensus . The towns passed decrees. The men of Firmum took 
the lead in promising money for the war, the Marrucini (or 
perhaps rather a faction among them hostile to Pollio) stimulated 
recruiting under pain of the loss of citizen rights. Further, a 
distinguished knight and an excellent patriot, L. Visidius, who 
had watched over Cicero’s safety during his consulate, not 
1 P/y 7 . 6 and 7. 2 lb. 7, 3, cf. 5, 5. 



i 7 o THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 

merely encouraged his neighbours to enlist but helped them 
with generous subsidies. 1 

On the first or second day of February the envoys returned, 
lacking Sulpicius, who had perished on the aiduous journey, and 
announcing terms that aroused Cicero to anger. ‘Nothing could 
be more scandalous, more disgusting than the conduct of their 
mission by Piso and Philippus/ 2 The conditions upon which 
Antonius was prepared to treat were these: 3 he would give up 
Cisalpine Gaul, but insisted on retaining Comata: that province 
he would hold for the five years following, until Brutus and 
Cassius should have become consuls and have vacated their 
consular provinces, that is, until the end of the year 39 b.c., 
probably the date originally named in the plebiscite of June 1st. 

The proposal of Antonius was neither unreasonable nor con¬ 
tumacious. As justice at Rome derived from politics, with 
legality a casual or partisan question, he required guarantees: 
it was not merely his dignitas that he had to think of, but his 
salus. The sole security for that was the possession of an army. To 
give up his army and surrender at the discretion of a party that 
claimed to be the government, that was folly and certain extinc¬ 
tion. Considering the recent conduct of his enemies at Rome and 
in Italy, he had every reason to demand safeguards in return for 
compromising on his right to Gallia Cisalpina under a law 
passed by the Roman People—to say nothing of condoning the 
rank conferred upon a private adventurer. As for Brutus and 
Cassius, he appears to have recognized their right to the consulate 
of 41 B.c. The breach was not yet irreparable. 

The Senate was obdurate. They rejected the proposals and 
passed the ultimate decree—the consuls were to take steps for 
the security of the State. With the consuls was associated Octa- 
vianus. The most extreme of sanctions, however, was reserved 
on the plea of the consular L. Julius Caesar, the uncle of Anto¬ 
nius, an aged senator of blameless repute and Republican senti¬ 
ments. Pansa supported him. Antonius was not declared a 
public enemy. But Cicero did not abate his efforts. As a patrio¬ 
tic demonstration he proposed on the same day yet another 
statue in the Forum, for the dead ambassador Sulpicius Rufus, 
thereby quarrelling with P. Servilius. 4 

1 Phil. 7, 24: ‘vicinos suos non cohortatus est solum ut milites fierent sed etiam 
facultatibus suis sublevavit.’ The activities of this influential and wealthy country 
gentleman could have been described in very different terms. 

2 Ad fam. 12, 4, 1: nihil autem foedius Philippo et Pisone legatis, nihil 

flagitiosius.’ 3 Phil. 8, 27. * Phil. 9. 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 171 

A state of war was then proclaimed. It existed already. For 
the moment, however, no change in the military situation in the 
north. The eastern provinces brought news of sudden and 
splendid success. While the Senate negotiated with Antonius, 
Brutus and Cassius had acted: they seized the armies of all the 
lands beyond the sea, from Illyricum to Egypt. About Cassius 
there were strong rumours in the first days of February: 1 from 
Brutus, an official dispatch to the Senate, which probably arrived 
in the second week of the month. 2 

After departing from Italy, Brutus went to Athens and was 
seen at the lectures of philosophers. It may be presumed that his 
agents were at work in Macedonia and elsewhere. He was aided 
by the retiring proconsul of Macedonia, Hortensius, the son of 
the great orator—and one of his own near relatives. 3 When all was 
ready, and the decision at last taken, he moved with rapidity. 
The quaestors of Asia and Syria, on their homeward journey, 
bearing the revenues of those provinces, were intercepted and 
persuaded to contribute their funds 4 —for the salvation of the 
State, no doubt. By the end of the year almost all Macedonia 
was in his hands; and not only Macedonia—Vatinius the governor 
of Illyricum had been unable to prevent his legions from passing 
over. Such was the situation that confronted C. Antonius when 
he landed at Dyrrhachium to take over the province of Macedonia 
at the beginning of January. Brutus quickly defeated Antonius, 
drove him southward and penned him up in the city of Apollonia. 

Even more spectacular was the success of Cassius. He went 
to Syria, a province where he was known and esteemed, out¬ 
stripping Dolabella. There he found six legions, under the 
Caesarian generals Staius Murcus and Marcius Crispus, en¬ 
camped outside the city of Apamea which the Pompeian adven¬ 
turer Caecilius Bassus was holding with a legion. 5 Besiegers and 
besieged alike joined Cassius. That was not all. The Caesarian 
A. Allienus was conducting four legions northwards from Egypt 
through Palestine, to join Dolabella. They too went to swell the 
army of Cassius. 

1 Ad Jam. 12, 2 (Feb. 2nd); 3 (later in the month). 

2 Phil. 10, of uncertain date. 

3 Phil. 10, 1 3 \ILS 9460 (Delos). On the relationship with Brutus, cf. Miinzer, 
RA t 342 ff. 

4 M. Appuleius (Phil. 10, 24), probably quaestor of Asia, C. Antistius Vetus of 
Syria (Ad M. Brutum 1, 11, 1; Plutarch, Brutus 25). P. Lentulus, Trebonius’ 
quaestor, claims that he helped Cassius (Ad Jam. 12, 14, 6). 

5 On these men, above, p. 111. 



172 THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 

On receipt of the dispatch from Brutus the Senate was sum¬ 
moned. Quelling the objections of the Antonian Calenus, Cicero 
spoke for Brutus and secured the legalization of a usurped com¬ 
mand : l Brutus was appointed proconsul of Macedonia, Illyricum 
and Achaia. Cicero had acquired no little facility in situations of 
this kind, loudly invoking the plea of patriotism and the higher 
legality. As for Cassius, there was as yet no authentic news of 
his successes: his usurpation in the East and seizure of a dozen 
legions was not confirmed until more than two months had 
elapsed. 

For the Republican cause, victory now seemed assured in the 
end. Consternation descended on the associates of Antonius, on 
manv a Caesarian, and on such honest friends of peace as were 
not blinded by the partisan emotions of the moment. On a long 
view, the future was ominous with a war much more formidable 
than that which was being so gently prosecuted in the Cisalpina. 
Cicero pressed his advantage. Early in March came the news 
that Dolabella, passing through Asia on his way to Syria and 
opposed by the proconsul Trebonius, had captured him and 
executed him after a summary trial: 2 the charge was probably 
high treason, justified by assistance which Trebonius and his 
quaestor had given to the enterprises of Brutus and Cassius. A 
thrill of horror ran through the Senate. The Republicans ex¬ 
ploited their advantage with allegations of atrocities—it was 
affirmed that Dolabella had applied torture to the unfortunate 
Trebonius. The Caesarians were thus forced to disown their 
compromising ally. It was Calenus and no other who proposed 
a motion declaring Dolabella a public enemy. This diplomatic 
concession perhaps enabled moderate men like Pansa to rebuff 
Cicero’s proposal to confer upon Cassius the commission of 
making war against Dolabella, with an extraordinary command 
over all the provinces of the East. 

The revolutionary change in the East alarmed the friends of 
Antonius: there was little time to be lost, for the beginning of 
hostilities in the north would preclude any compromise. Two 
attempts were made in March. In Rome Piso and Calenus 
carried a motion that an embassy be sent to treat with Antonius. 
Five consulars were appointed to a representative commission, 
namely Calenus, Cicero, Piso, P. Servilius, and L. Caesar. 
Cicero, however, changed his mind and backed out. The em¬ 
bassy, he urged, would be futile: to negotiate at this stage would 
1 Phil. IO, 25 f. 2 Phil. II C c . March 6th). 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 173 

impair the military fervour of the patriotic front. 1 The project 
was therefore wrecked. 

On March 20th came dispatches from Lepidus and Plancus, 
acting in concert with each other and presumably with Antonins. 
Lepidus at least seems to have made no secret of his agreement 
with Antonius: Antonius suppressed, he would be the next of the 
Caesarian generals to be assailed. They protested loyalty to the 
Republic, devotion to concord. To that end they urged an 
accommodation. Servilius spoke against it. Cicero supported 
him, with lavish praises for the good offices of those patriotic 
and high-minded citizens Lepidus and Plancus, but spurning 
all thought of negotiation so long as Antonius retained his army. 2 
Cicero had in his hands an open letter sent by Antonius to Hirtius 
and Octavianus, spirited, cogent and menacing. Antonius warned 
them that they were being used by Pompeians to destroy the 
Caesarian party, assured them that the generals stood by him, and 
reiterated his resolve to keep faith with Lepidus, with Plancus 
and with Dolabella. 3 Cicero could not resist the challenge to his 
talent. He quoted, mocked and refuted the Antonian manifesto. 
On the same evening, in a tone of pained surprise and earnest 
exhortation, he wrote to Plancus. 4 To Lepidus he was abrupt 
and overbearing—‘in my opinion you will be wiser not to make 
meddling proposals for peace: neither the Senate nor the People 
approves of them—nor does any patriotic citizen.' 5 Lepidus did 
not forget the insult to his dignitas. 

Such was the situation towards the end of March. The efforts 
of diplomacy, honest or partisan, were alike exhausted. The 
arbitrament now rested with the sword. 

Through the month of February the forces of the consul 
Hirtius and the pro-praetor Octavianus were encamped along the 
Via Aemilia to the south-east of Bononia, at Claterna and at 
Forum Cornelii. In March they moved forward in the direction 
of Mutina, passing Bononia, which Antonius was forced to 
abandon; but Antonius drew his lines closer around Mutina. 

Octavianus and Hirtius avoided battle, waiting for Pansa to 
come up with his four legions of recruits. Pansa had left Rome 
about March 19th. Antonius for his part planned to crush Pansa 

1 Phil. 12 (c. March 10th?). 2 Phil . 13. 

3 lb. 13, 22 ff. 

4 Ad fant. 10, 6 , 3: ‘haec impulsus benevolentia scripsi paulo severius.’ 

5 lb. 27, 2: ‘itaque sapientius meo quidem iudicio facies si te in istam pacifi- 
cationem non interpones, quae neque senatui neque populo nec cuiquam bono 
probatur.’ 



174 THE senate against antonius 

separately. He met and broke the army of Pansa at Forum 
Gallorum some seven miles south-east of Mutina. In the battle 
Pansa himself was wounded, but Hirtius arriving towards evening 
fell upon the victorious and disordered troops of Antonius and 
retrieved the day, no soldier in repute or in ambition, but equal 
to his station and duty. The great Antonius extricated himself 
only after considerable loss. Octavianus, in the meantime, held 
and defended the camp near Mutina. Along with Pansa and 
Hirtius he received the imperatorial acclamation. Such was the 
battle of Forum Gallorum (April 14th). 1 

Seven days later, Antonius was forced to risk a battle at Mutina. 
He was defeated but not routed; on the other side, Hirtius fell. 
In the field Antonius was rapid of decision. On the day after 
the defeat he got the remnants of his army into order and set out 
along the Aemilia towards the west, making for Gallia Narbonen- 
sis and the support of Lepidus and Plancus, assured to him a 
month earlier, but now highly dubious. 

At Rome the exultation was unbounded. Antonius and his 
followers were at last declared public enemies. For the victorious 
champions of the constitution, the living and the dead, new and 
extraordinary honours had already been devised. 2 A thanks¬ 
giving of fifty days was decreed to the immortal gods—unprece¬ 
dented and improper in a war between citizens, and never claimed 
by Sulla or by Caesar. To a thoughtful patriot it was no occasion 
for rejoicing. 'Think rather of the desolation of Italy and all the 
fine soldiers slain’, wrote Pollio from Spain. 3 Cicero had boasted 
in the Senate that the Caesarian veterans were on the wane, no 
match for the patriotic fervour of the levies of Republican Italy. 4 
When it came to battle at Mutina, the grim and silent sword- 
work of the veterans terrified the raw recruits. 5 The carnage was 
tremendous. 

With a glorious victory to the credit of the patriotic armies and 
all the provinces of the East in the hands of Brutus and Cassius, 
the Republic appeared to be winning all along the line. The 

1 Ad Jam. io, 30 (Galba’s report). 

2 Phil. 14 (April 21st). 

3 Ad Jam. 10, 33, 1: ‘quo si qui laetantur in praesentia, quia videntur et duces 
et veterani Caesaris partium interisse, tamen postmodo necesse est doleant cum 
vastitatem Italiae respcxcrint. nam et robur et suboles militum interiit.* 

4 Phil. 11, 39: ‘nihil enim semper floret; aetas succedit aetati; diu legiones 
Caesaris viguerunt; nunc vigent Pansae, vigent Hirti, vigent Caesaris fill, vigent 
Planci ; vincunt numero, vincunt aetatibus; nimirum etiam auctoritate vincunt.’ 

5 Appian, BC 3, 68, 281 : dd/ifio? re fjv rot? vetjXvatv cVeAflot/cri, rotaSc €pya 
guv eurafta /cat ouuTrfj yiyvofitva €<j>opd)(iLV. 



THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS 175 

victory at Mutina was deceptive and ruinous. The ingenious 
policy of destroying Antonius and elevating Caesar's heir com¬ 
mended itself neither to the generals of the western provinces nor 
to the Liberators; Cicero and his friends had reckoned without the 
military resource of the best general of the day and the political 
maturity of the youth Octavianus. The unnatural compact 
between the revolutionary leader and the constitutional party 
crumbled and crashed to the ground. 



XIII. THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 


T HE public enemy was on the run. All that remained was to 
hound him down. If Lepidus and Plancus held firm in the 
West, the combined armies of the Republic in northern Italy 
would have an easy task. So it might seem. Antonius broke 
away, moving along the Aemilia, on April 22nd. He secured a 
start of two days, for D. Brutus went to consult Pansa at Bononia, 
only to find that the consul had succumbed to his wounds; 
Antonius soon increased his lead, for his army was strong in 
cavalry. Brutus had none; and the exhilaration of a victory in 
which his legions had so small a share could not compensate the 
ravages of a long siege. 

That was not the worst. The conduct of the war by the two 
consuls had overshadowed for a time the person of Octavianus. 
Hirtius and Pansa, at the head of armies, might have been able 
to arrest hostilities after the defeat of Antonius, curb Caesar’s 
heir and impose some kind of settlement. They were honest 
patriots. With their providential removal, the adventurer emerges 
again, now unexpectedly to dominate the game of high politics. 

Brutus urged Octavianus to turn south across the Apennines 
into Etruria, to cut off Ventidius and prevent him from marching 
westwards to join Antonius. Ventidius, an important but some¬ 
times neglected factor in the campaign of Mutina, was coming 
up in the rear of the constitutional forces with three veteran 
legions raised in his native Picenum. Caesar’s heir refused to 
take orders from Caesar’s assassin: nor, if he had, is it certain 
that the troops would have obeyed. 1 And so Ventidius slipped 
through. 

Before long Octavianus received news from Rome that amply 
justified his decision: he was to be discarded as soon as he had 
served the purposes of the enemies of Antonius. So at least he 
inferred from the measures passed in the Senate when the tidings 
of Mutina were known. In the victory-honours Octavianus was 
granted an ovation, Decimus Brutus, however, a triumph, the 
charge of the war and the legions of the dead consuls. 2 Orations 

1 Adfam. 11, io, 4: ‘sed neque Caesari imperari potest nec Caesar exercitui suo, 
quod utrumque pessirnum est.’ 

2 The ovation was opposed and perhaps rejected by certain Republicans in the 
Senate (Ad M. Brutum i, 15, 9). However that may be, the Autobiography of 



THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 177 

and a monument were to honour the memory of the glorious 
dead. 1 Their comrades expected more solid recompense. But 
the Senate reduced the bounties so generously promised to the 
patriotic armies, choosing a commission to effect that salutary 
economy. Octavianus was not among its members—but neither 
was I). Brutus. The envoys were instructed to approach the 
troops directly. 

The soldiers refused to tolerate such a slight upon their leader, 
patron and friend. Octavianus, his forces augmented by the 
legions of Pansa, which he refused to surrender to D. Brutus, 
resolved to stand firm, precarious though his own position was. 
Antonius might be destroyed—hence ruin to the Caesarian 
cause, and soon to Caesar’s heir. Antonius had warned him of 
that, and Antonius was uttering a palpable truth. 2 On a rational 
calculation of persons and interests, it was likely that Antonius 
would regain the support of Lepidus and Plancus. Antonius and 
the Liberators might even combine against their common enemy 
—civil wars have witnessed stranger vicissitudes of alliance. 3 
Yet, even if this did not happen, he might be caught between 
Caesarians in the West and Republicans in the East, crushed and 
exterminated. If Brutus and Cassius came to Italy with their 
host of seventeen legions, his ‘father’ Cicero would have no com¬ 
punction about declaring the young man a public enemy. The 
danger was manifest. It did not require to be demonstrated by 
the advice which the Caesarian consul Pansa on his death-bed 
may—or may not—have given to Caesar’s heir. 4 

And now on others beside Octavianus the menace from the East 
loomed heavily. The Republicans in the Senate showed their 
hand. The position of M. Brutus had already been legalized. 
Shortly after the news of Mutina, the provinces and armies of the 

Augustus, in self-justification, incriminated the Senate for slights put upon him, 
exaggerating greatly, cf. F. Blumcnthal, Wiener Studien xxxv (1913), 270 f. 

1 Phil. 14, 33 (after the Battle of Forum Gallorum): ‘erit igitur exstructa moles 
opcre magnifico incisaequc litterae, divinae virtutis testes sempiternae, nun- 
quamque de vobis eorum qui aut videbunt vestrum monumentum aut audicnt 
gratissimus sermo conticescet. ita pro mortali condicione vitae irnmortalitatem 
estis consecuti.’ 

2 lb. 13, 40 (Antonius’ own words): ‘quibus, utri nostrum ceciderint, lucro 
futurum est, quod spectaculum adhuc ipsa Fortuna vitavit, ne videret unius 
corporis duas acies lanista Cicerone dimicantis.’ To call Cicero a ‘lanista’ was a 
fair and pointed retort to his favourite appellation for Antonius, ‘gladiator’. 

3 According to Velleius (2, 65, 1), Antonius threatened Octavianus with this 
alternative. 

4 Appian, BC 3, 75, 305 ff.—probably fictitious, cf. E. Schwartz, Hermes 
xxxiii (1898), 230; F. Blumcnthal, Wiener Studien xxxv (1913), 269. 



178 THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 

East were consigned to Cassius in one act. Nor was this all. 
Sextus Pompeius had already promised his aid to the Republic 
against Antonius. He was rewarded by a vote of thanks on 
March 20th. To Pompeius was now assigned an extraordinary 
command over the fleets and sea-coasts of the Roman dominions. 

It was high time for the Caesarians to repent and close their 
ranks. Octavianus made no move. He remained in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Bononia and awaited with equanimity the ruin of 
D. Brutus and the triumph of diplomacy among the Caesarian 
armies of the West. 

Antonius marched westwards with rapidity and resolution by 
Parma and Placentia to Dertona, then southwards by arduous 
passes across the mountains to Vada Sabatia (some thirty miles 
south-west of Genoa). Here on May 3rd he was met by the trusty 
Ventidius with the three veteran legions. The first round was 
won. The next task was to safeguard the march of the weary 
columns along the narrow Ligurian road between the mountains 
and the sea. Antonius dispatched cavalry northwards again across 
the Apennines, in the direction of Pollentia. Brutus fell into the 
trap and turned westwards. Antonius was able to enter Gallia 
Narbonensis unmolested. He reached Forum Julii towards the 
middle of the month. 

The confrontation with Lepidus was not long delayed. One of 
the lieutenants of Lepidus dispatched to Antonius during the 
War of Mutina remained in his company, another had studiously 
refrained from barring the road to Narbonensis. 1 In March, 
Lepidus urged the Senate to accept his mediation; and Antonius 
publicly asseverated that Lepidus was on his side. Their palpable 
community of interest, hardened by the renascence of the Repub¬ 
lican and Pompeian cause, was so strong that the loyal dispatches 
which Lepidus continued to send to the Senate shouM have 
deceived nobody. 

The two armies lay against each other for a time. A small 
river ran between the camps. When soldiers are citizens, rhetoric 
is worth regiments. At a famous scene by the bank of the river 
Apsus in Albania, Caesar’s general Vatinius essayed his vigorous 
oratory on the soldiers of Pompeius. 2 But not for long—Labienus 

1 M. Junius Silanus, his kinsman, had actually fought at Mutina (Ad fam „ 
10, 30, 1). It was Q. Tcrcntius Culleo who joined Antonius instead of opposing 
his invasion of Narbonensis. Lepidus alleged that he was pained by their behaviour 
but merciful—‘nos etsi graviter ab iis laesi eramus, quod contra nostram voluntatem 
ad Antonium ierant, tarnen nostrae humanitatis et necessitudinis causa eorum 
salutis rationem habuimus’ (Adfam . io, 34, 2). z Caesar, BC 3, 19. 



THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 179 

intervened. Lepidus was not as vigilant against the dangers of 
fraternization as had been the generals of Pompeius. He did not 
wish to be—nor could he have subjugated the strong Caesarian 
sympathies of officers and men : they followed Lepidus not from 
merit or affection but only because Lepidus was a Caesarian. 
The troops introduced Antonius into the camp, the Tenth 
Legion, once commanded by him, taking the lead. 1 Lepidus 
acquiesced. One of his lieutenants, a certain Juventius Laterensis, 
a Republican and an honest man, fell upon his sword. Lepidus 
now penned a dispatch to the Senate, explaining, in the elevated 
phrases now universally current, how his soldiers had been un¬ 
willing to take the lives of fellow-citizens. The letter closed with 
a pointed sentence, surely the reply to Cicero’s firm rejection of 
his earlier proposals for peace and concord. 2 

It was on May 30th that Antonius and Lepidus carried out 
their peaceful coup . They had now to reckon with Plancus. In 
April the governor of Gallia Comata mustered his army and made 
a semblance of intervening in northern Italy on the side of the 
Republic. On April 26th he crossed the Rhone and marched 
south-eastwards as though to join Lepidus, coming to within 
forty miles of the latter’s camp. Lepidus encouraged him. But 
Plancus feared a trap—he knew his Lepidus; 3 and Laterensis 
warned him that both Lepidus and his army were unreliable. So 
Plancus turned back and established himself at Cularo (Grenoble). 
There he waited for D. Brutus to come over the pass of the Little 
St. Bernard. If Plancus had by now resolved to join Antonius, 
his design was subtle and grandiose—to lure Brutus to his ruin 
without the necessity of battle. Despondent, with tired troops, 
delayed by the raising of new levies, short of money and harassed 
by petulant missives from Cicero, Brutus trudged onwards. He 
reached Plancus towards the end of June. Their combined forces 
amounted to fourteen legions, imposing in name alone. Four 
were veteran, the rest raw recruits. Plancus knew what recruits 
were worth. 4 

A lull followed. Antonius was in no hurry. He waited 
patiently for time, fear and propaganda to dissolve the forces 
of his adversaries. On July 28th Plancus composed his last 

1 Appian, BC 3, 83, 341 ff. 

2 Ad fam. 10, 35, 2: ‘quod si salutis omnium ac dignitatis rationem habueritis, 
melius et vobis et rei p. consuletis.’ 

3 lb. 10, 23, 1: ‘Lepidum enim pulchre noram.* 

4 lb. 10, 24, 3: ‘quantum autem in acie tironi sit cornmittendurn, nimium saepe 
expertum habemus.’ 



i8o THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 

surviving epistle to Cicero. His style had lost none of its elegance: 
he protested good will and loyalty, explained how weak his forces 
were, and blamed upon the young Caesar the escape of Antonius 
and his union with Lepidus, reprobating his ambition in the most 
violent of terms. 1 

Now Pollio supervened, coming up with two legions from 
Hispania Ulterior. Earlier in the year he had complained that 
the Senate sent him no instructions; nor could he have marched 
to Italy against the will of the ambiguous Lepidus; further, his 
troops had been solicited by envoys of Antonius and Lepidus. 2 

Pollio was bound by his personal friendship to Antonius; and 
he now reconciled Plancus and Antonius. So Plancus joined the 
company of the ‘parricides’ and ‘brigands’—as he had so recently 
termed them. The unfortunate Brutus, duped by Plancus and 
betrayed by his troops, fled northwards, hoping to make his way 
through the Alpine lands by a wide circuit to Macedonia, lie was 
trapped and killed by a Gallic chieftain. 

It would be easy and unprofitable to arraign the Caesarian 
generals for lack of heroism and lack of principle. They had no 
quarrel with Antonius; it was not they who had built up a novel 
and aggressive faction, mobilizing private armies and constitu¬ 
tional sanctions against a proconsul. Where and with whom 
stood now the legitimate government and the authority of the 
Roman State, it was impossible to discover. For the judgement 
on these men, if judged they must be, it would be sufficient to 
demonstrate that they acted as they did from a reasoned and 
balanced estimate of the situation. But more than this can be said. 
Pollio, the would-be neutral, the cautious and diplomatic Plancus, 
even the perfidious and despised Lepidus may yet in treachery be 
held true to the Roman People at a time when patriotism and 
high principle were invoked to justify the shedding of Roman 
blood. It was no time-server or careerist, but the Stoic Favonius, 
the friend of Cato and of Brutus, who pronounced civil war to be 
the worst of evils, worse even than submitting to tyranny. 3 

In these wars between citizens, the generals and the politicians 
found themselves thwarted at every turn by the desires of the 
soldiery—on the surface and on a partisan view, the extremest of 
evils. The enemies of Antonius deprecated bitterly the influence 
of the veterans. 4 The veterans had no wish for war—they had 

1 Ad jam. io, 24. On Octavianus, ib. § 5 f. 2 Cf. his letters, Ad jam. io, 31- 3. 

3 Plutarch, Brutus 12: x € ^P ov ttrat fioi’apxias 7 rapavop.ov 7roA epov ip<j>vXiov. 

* Phil. 10, 18. 



THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 181 

their estates; and the soldiers serving in the legions might expect 
ultimate recompense from their generals without the necessity of 
fighting for it. Their reluctance to obey the constitutional 
principles invoked by faction and to fight against their fellow- 
citizens had the result that they were described as ‘madmen’ by 
the adversaries of Antonius. 1 They deserved a friendlier designa¬ 
tion. The behaviour of the armies gives a more faithful reflection 
of the sentiments of the Roman People than do the interested 
assertions of politicians about the ‘marvellous unanimity of the 
Roman People and of all Italy’. 2 

The energy of Antonius, the devotion of the Caesarian legions, 
the timidity, interest or patriotism of the governors of the 
western provinces, all had conspired to preserve him from the 
armed violence of an unnatural coalition. In Italy that coalition 
had already collapsed; Caesar’s heir turned his arms against his 
associates and was marching on Rome. Fate was forging a new 
and more enduring compact of interest and sentiment through 
which the revived Caesarian party was to establish the Dictator¬ 
ship again, this time without respect of life and property, in the 
spirit and deed of revolution. 

On April 27th all Rome celebrated the glorious victory of 
Mutina. As the month of May wore on, rejoicing gave way to 
disillusion. Antonius had escaped to the West. Men blamed the 
slowness and indecision of D. Brutus; who, for his part, advo¬ 
cated the summoning of Marcus Brutus from Macedonia. 
Already there was talk of bringing over the African legions. 

In Rome a steady disintegration sapped the public counsels. 
No new consuls were elected. There was no leadership, no 
policy. A property-tax had been levied to meet the demands of 
the armies of the Republic. The return was small and grudging; 3 
and the agents of the Liberators had intercepted the revenues of 
the eastern provinces. As Cicero wrote late in May, the Senate 
was a weapon that had broken to pieces in his hands. 4 

The prime cause of disquiet was Cicero’s protege, the ‘divine 
youth whom Providence had sent to save the State’. 5 Octavianus 
and his army grew daily more menacing. That young man had 
got wind of a witticism of Cicero—he was to be praised and 

1 Ad fam. 10, 11,2 (the words ‘furor’ and ‘furiosus’ are used). 

1 lb. 12, 5, 3: ‘populi vero Romani totiusque Italiae mira conscnsio est.’ 

3 It was trivial (1 per cent.), but the rich refused to pay (Ad M. Brutum 1,18, 5). 

4 Ad fam. u, 14, 1: 'opyavov enim erat meurn senatus: id iam est dissolutum.’ 

5 Phil. 5, 43: ‘quis turn nobis, quis populo Romano obtulit hunc divinum 
udulesccntem deus?’ 



i 82 THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 

honoured, lifted up and lifted off. 1 Cicero may never have said it. 
That did not matter. The happy invention epitomized all too 
faithfully the subtle and masterly policy of using Caesar’s heir to 
wreck the Caesarian party. Octavianus did not intend to be 
removed; and the emphasis that open enemies and false friends 
laid upon his extreme youth was becoming more and more irk¬ 
some. lie would show them. 

Cicero entered into the original compact with Octavianus with 
clear perception of the dangers of their equivocal alliance. I le had 
not been deluded then. 2 But during the months after Mutina, 
in the face of the most palpable evidence, he persisted in asserting 
the wisdom of his policy, and the value of the results thereby 
achieved, in hoping that Octavianus would still support the con¬ 
stitutional cause—now that it had become flagrantly Pompeian 
and Republican. 3 

The consulate lay vacant but not unclaimed. Octavianus 
aspired to the honour; and it would clearly be expedient to give 
the youth a senior consular for colleague. Of the intrigues con¬ 
cerning this matter there is scant but significant'evidence. In 
June (so it would seem) Cicero denounced certain ‘treasonable 
machinations’, revealed their authors, and rebuked to their faces 
the relatives of Caesar (presumably Philippus and Marcellus) 
who appeared to be supporting the ambition of Octavianus. 4 5 6 Who 
was the destined colleague ? It may well have been the ambiguous 
P. Ser\ilius, for to this summer, if not earlier, belongs a signifi¬ 
cant political fact, the betrothal of his daughter to the young 
adventurer. 3 Cicero had already crossed swords with Servilius 
more than once; and in early April, after a quarrel over a vote 
complimentary to Plancus, he described Servilius as ‘homo 
furiosusV’ 

If a consul was required, what more deserving candidate than 
Cicero himself? About the time of the Battle of Forum Gallorum 
and rumoured death of Pansa, it was widely believed in Rome 

1 Ad jam. 11, 20, 1 : ‘laudandum adult-set- ntem, ornandum, tollcndum.’ Cicero 
(lb. 11, 21, 1) does not expressly deny that he said so. 

1 Above, p. 143. 

3 Ad i\I. Brutum 1, 15, 0 (mid-July): ‘tanturn dieo, Caesarern hunc adule- 
scentem, per quern ad hue sumus, si verum fa ten volumus, Huxisse ex fonte con- 
sihorum meorum.’ 

4 Tb. 1, 10,3. He there describes Octavianus as‘meis consiliis adhuc gubernatum, 
piaeclara ipsum indole admirabilique constantia’. 

5 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 62, 1 —the only evidence, but unimpeachable. 

6 Ad M. Brutum 2, 2, 3. After an altercation covering two days, Servilius was 
crushed - ‘a me ita tractus est ut eum in perpetuuin modestiorem sperem fore.’ 



THK SECOND MARCH ON ROME 183 

that Cicero would usurp the vacant place. 1 Later, after both 
consuls had fallen, Brutus in Macedonia heard a report that 
Cicero had actually been elected. 2 Of a later proposal there is 
evidence not lightly to be discarded. 3 Cicero and Octavianus 
were to be joint consuls. It might fairly be represented that the 
mature wisdom of a senior statesman was best employed in 
guiding and repressing the inordinate ambitions of youth. It had 
ever been Cicero’s darling notion to play the political counsellor 
to a military leader; and this was but the culmination of the 
policy that he had initiated in the previous autumn. 

Brutus was evidently afraid of some such manoeuvre. 4 He 
remained in Macedonia, though a vote of the Senate had sum¬ 
moned him to Italy after the Battle of Mutina. Now, in June, 
Cicero wrote to him in urgent tones. Brutus refused. Their 
incompatibility of temperament was aggravated by a complete 
divergence of aims and policy. This is made evident by two 
incidents. Already Cicero and Brutus had exchanged sharp 
words over C. Antonius, whom Brutus had captured in Mace¬ 
donia. Cicero insisted that the criminal should be put to death: 
there was nothing to choose between Dolabella and any of the 
three Antonii; only practise a salutary severity, and there will be 
no more civil wars. 5 The plea of Brutus was plain and dignified. 
It was more important to avert the strife of citizens than wreak 
savage vengeance on the vanquished. 6 To his firm character and 
Roman patriotism there was something highly distasteful in 
Cicero’s fanatical feud against Antonius. Brutus had not broken 
off all relations with M. Antonius—he may still have hoped for 
an accommodation: 7 the brother of the Caesarian leader was a 
valuable hostage. 

Brutus had been desperately unwilling to provoke a civil war, 
ready even to go into voluntary exile for the sake of concord. 8 

1 The rumour had been spread by Cieero’s enemies, Phil. 14, 15 f. 

2 Ad M. Rrutum 1, 4a, 4 (May 15th). 

Appian, B(J 3, 82, 337 ff.; Dio 46, 42, 2; Plutarch, Cicero 45 f. If Plutarch is 
to be believed, Augustus admitted that he had played upon Cicero's ambition to 
be consul. 4 Ad M. Rrutum 1,4a, 4 (May 15th). 

5 lb. 1, 2 a, 2: ‘salutaris severitas vincit inanem speciem clementiae. quod si 
elementes esse volumus, nunquam deerunt bclla civilia.’ 

** Ib.: ‘acrius prohibenda bella civilia esse quam in superatos iracundiam 
exercendam.’ 

7 Gelzcr, P-W x, 1003 f. In February Antonius had recognized the claims of 
Brutus and Cassius to the consulate in 41 n.c., Phil. 8, 27, cf. Dio 46, 30, 4; 35, 3. 

8 Compare the last edict of the Liberators (Velleius 2, 62, 3): ‘libentcr se vel in 
perpetuo exiho victuros, dum res publica constaret et concordia, nec ullam belli 
civilis praebituros materiam.’ 



184 THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 

The pressure of events gradually drove him to a decision. When 
he left Italy in August, it was not with the plan already conceived 
of mustering the armies of the East, invading Italy and restoring 
the Republic through violence. He did not believe in violence. 
At Athens he looked about for allies, opened negotiations with 
provincial governors—but did not act at once. The news of armies 
raised in Italy and Caesar s heir inarching on Rome will have con¬ 
vinced him at last that there was no room left for scruple or for 
legality. 1 Yet even so, the possession of Macedonia and an army 
meant for Brutus not so much an instrument for war as security 
and a basis for negotiation. He was reluctant to force the pace and 
preclude compromise—in this matter perhaps at variance with the 
more resolute Cassius. 2 In any event, principles and honour com¬ 
manded a Republican to resist the worst excesses of civil war. 
Lepidus was a Caesarian: but Brutus refused to concur in the 
hounding down of the family of Lepidus, who had married his 
own half-sister. Family ties had prevailed against political hostility 
in civil wars before now when waged by Roman nobles. 3 Lepidus 
was declared a public enemy on June 30th. Before the news 
reached him, Brutus, in anticipation, wrote to Cicero, interceding 
for his relatives. Cicero answered with a rebuke. 4 

Octavianus was a greater danger to the Republic than Antonius; 
that was the argument of the sombre and perspicacious Brutus. 
Two letters reveal his insight. 3 The one to Atticus—‘what is 
the point of overthrowing Antonius to install the domination of 
Octavianus? Cicero is as bad as fialvidienus. Men fear death, 
exile and poverty too much. Cicero, for all his principles, ac¬ 
commodates himself to servitude and seeks a propitious master. 
Brutus for his part will continue the fight against all pow r ers that 
set themselves above the law/ 6 

On receipt of an extract from a letter written by Cicero to 
Octavianus, the Roman and the Republican lost all patience. 

1 The evidence does not enable the occupation of Macedonia by Brutus (and of 
Syria by Cassius) to be closely dated. According to CJclzer, Brutus did not act 
until he had news of the session of November 28th, when Antonius deprived 
Brutus and Cassius of the praetorian provinces which they had refused to take 
over (P-W x, 1000). This date is probably too late, tor it does not allow a sufficient 
margin of time for the passage of news—and movements of troops—in winter. 

1 This may be why he wished to delay the publication in Rome of the report of 
Cassius’s seizure of the eastern armies (Ad M. Brutum 2, 4, 5). 

3 Above, p. 64. 

4 Ad M. Brutum 1, 15, 10 f. 

5 lb. 1, 16 and 17 (early July?). The authenticity of these two letters has been 
contested, on inadequate grounds. 

6 lb. 1, 17. 



THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 185 

‘Read again your words and deny that they are the supplications 
of a slave to a despot.’ 1 Cicero had suggested that Octavianus 
might be induced to pardon the assassins of Caesar. ‘Better dead 
than alive by his leave: 2 let Cicero live on in ignominy.’ 3 

Even in mid-July, when the end was near, Cicero would not 
admit to Brutus the ruinous failure of the alliance with Caesar’s 
heir. He asseverated his responsibility for that policy. But his 
words belied him—he did not cease to urge Brutus to return to 
Italy. After a council with Servilia he launched a final appeal 
on July 27th. 4 By now Brutus was far out of reach. Before the 
end of May he began to march eastwards through Macedonia to 
regulate the affairs of Thrace, recover Asia from Dolabella, and 
make a junction with Cassius. To cross to Italy without Cassius 
and the resources of the East would have been a fatal step. The 
Caesarian generals would have united at once to destroy him— 
Octavianus in his true colours, openly on their side against 
Caesar’s murderer. 

The designs of Octavianus upon the consulate were suspected 
in May, his intrigues were revealed in June. In July a strange 
embassy confronted the Senate, some four hundred centurions 
and soldiers, bearing the mandate of the army and the proposals 
of Caesar’s heir. For themselves they asked the promised bounty, 
for Octavianus the consulate. The latter request they were able 
to support with a wealth of historical precedents of a familiar 
kind. 5 The argument of youth and merit had already been ex¬ 
ploited by Cicero. (> The Senate refused. The sword decided. 7 

For the second time in ten months Caesar’s heir set out to 
march on Rome. He crossed the Rubicon at the head of eight 
legions and then pushed on with picked troops, moving with the 
rapidity of Caesar. There was consternation in Rome. The 
Senate sent envoys with the offer of permission to stand for the 
consulate in absence 8 —a move of conciliation that may have been 

1 Ad M. Brutum 1, 16, 1 : ‘pudet condicionis ac fortunae sed tamen scribendum 
est: commendas nostram salutem illi, quae morte qua non perniciosior? ut prorsus 
prac te feras non sublatam dominationem sed dominum commutatum esse, verba 
tua recognosce et aude negare servientis adversus regem istas esse preces.’ 

2 lb.: ‘atqui non esse quam esse per ilium pracstat.* Cicero himself in the 
previous November had written /xr/Se otoOelrjv in to ye toioutov (Ad Att. 16, 15,3). 

3 lb. i, 16, 8: ‘longe a servientibus abero mihique esse iudicabo Romam, ubi- 
cumque liberum esse licebit, ac vestri miserebor, quibus nec aetas neque honores 
ncc virtus aliena dulcedinem vivendi minuere potuerit.’ 

4 lb. 1, 18, iff. 5 Appian, BC 3, 88, 361. 

b Phil. 5, 47, above, p. 167. 

7 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 26, 1 &c. (a picturesque and superfluous anecdote 
about a centurion’s dramatic gesture in the Senate). 8 Dio 46, 44, 2. 



186 THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME 

due to Cicero, still trusting that the adventurer could be won 
to legitimate methods. Octavianus was not deflected from his 
march. 

And now for a moment a delusive ray of hope shone upon the 
sinking hulk of the Republic. Two veteran legions from Africa 
arrived at Ostia. Along with a legion of recruits they were 
stationed on the Janiculum and the city was put in a posture of 
defence. Whether the Senate now declared Octavianus a public 
enemy is not recorded: these formalities were coming to matter 
less and less. Octavianus marched down the Flaminian Way and 
entered the city unopposed. The legions of the Republic went 
over without hesitation. A praetor committed suicide. That was 
the only bloodshed. The senators advanced to make their peace 
with Octavianus; among them, but not in the forefront, was 
Cicero. ‘Ah, the last of my friends\ the young man observed. 1 

Rut even now there were some who did not lose hope. In the 
evening came a rumour that the two legions which had deserted 
the consul for Octavianus in the November preceding, the Fourth 
and the Martia , ‘heavenly legions’ as Cicero described them, had 
declared for the Republic. The Senate met in haste. A tribune 
friendly to Cicero announced the glad tidings to the people in 
the Forum; and an officer was dispatched to organize military 
levies in Picenum. The rumour was false. 2 

On the following day Octavianus forbore to enter the city 
with armed men—a ‘free election’ was to be secured. The people 
chose him as consul along with Q. Pcdius, an obscure relative of 
unimpeachable repute, who did not survive the honour by many 
months. The new consul now entered Rome to pay sacrifice to the 
immortal gods. Twelve vultures were seen in the sky, the omen 
of Romulus, the founder of Rome. 3 The day was August 19th. 
Octavianus himself was not yet twenty. 

1 Appian, BC 3, 92, 382—perhaps not authentic. 

2 lb. 3, 93, 383 ff. 3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 95. 



XIV. THE PROSCRIPTIONS 


C AESAR'S heir now held Rome after the second attempt in 
ten months. The first time he had sought backing from 
senior statesmen and from the party of the constitution. Now 
he was consul, his only danger the rival army commanders. 

For the moment, certain brief formalities. To bring to trial 
and punishment the assassins of Caesar, a special court was 
established by a law of the consul Pedius; along with these state 
criminals a convenient fiction reckoned Sex. Pompeius, the 
admiral of the Republic. The ambitious or the shameless made 
show of high loyalty and competed for the right to prosecute. 
Agrippa indicted Cassius, 1 a person called L. Cornificius marked 
down Brutus as his prey. 2 Of the jurors, though carefully selected, 
one man gave his vote for absolution and remained unmolested 
until the proscriptions were duly instituted. Octavianus could 
afford to wait, to take vengeance upon the lesser enemies along 
with the greater. 

Rome could already have a foretaste of legal murder. One of 
the praetors, Q. Gallius, was accused of an attempt to assassinate 
the consul Octavianus. His indignant colleagues deposed the 
criminal from office, the mob plundered his house; the Senate, 
by a violent usurpation of authority, condemned him to death. 3 
The milder version of the fate of Q. Gallius is that he departed 
on a voyage. Pirates or shipwreck took the blame. 4 

Octavianus had spent his patrimony for purposes of the State, 
and now the State made requital. He seized the treasury, which, 
though depleted, could furnish for each of his soldiers the sum 
of two thousand five hundred denarii —more than ten times a 
year’s pay. 5 They had still to receive as much again. With a 
devoted army, augmented to eleven legions, the consul left Rome 
for the reckoning with Antoni us, whom he could now face as an 
equal. Antonius had been thwarted and defeated at Mutina. 
That was enough. It lay neither in the plans nor even in the 
power of Caesar’s heir to consummate the ruin of the most power¬ 
ful of the Caesarian generals. Hence an immediate change of front 

1 Velleius 2, 69, 5. An uncle of Velleius co-operated. 

2 Plutarch, Bratus 27. 3 Appian, BC 3, 95, 394. 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug . 27, 4. 

5 Appian, BC 3, 94, 387, cf. 74, 303. 



188 THE PROSCRIPTIONS 

after the Battle of Mutina, when he treated the Antonian captives 
with honour, sending one of the officers to Antonius with 
a friendly message, so it was alleged. 1 The union of Antonius 
and Lepidus cleared the situation; messages may then have 
passed. A clear indication was soon given. As Octavianus moved 
up the Flaminia, he instructed the other consul to revoke the 
decrees of outlawry against Antonius and Lepidus—for Lepidus, 
too, had been declared a public enemy. 

The last six months of the consulate of Antonius shattered 
for ever the coalition of March 17th, and divided for a time the 
ranks of the Caesarian party. With the revival of the Pompeian 
faction in the city of Rome and the gathering power of Brutus 
and Cassius in the East, the Caesarian leaders were drawn 
irresistibly together. They were instruments rather than agents. 
Behind them stood the legions and the forces of revolution. 

Octavianus crossed the Apennines and entered Cisalpine Gaul 
again, with a brave front. In force of arms, Lepidus and Antonius 
could have overwhelmed the young consul. His name and 
fortune shielded him once again. In the negotiations he now 
took his stand as an equal: but the apportionment of power 
revealed the true relation between the three leaders. 

After elaborate and no doubt necessary precautions for per¬ 
sonal security, the dynasts met in conference on a small island 
in a river near Bononia. Two days of concentrated diplomacy 
decided the fate of the Roman world. Antonius when consul had 
abolished the Dictatorship for all time. The tyrannic office was 
now revived under another name—for a period of five years three 
men were to hold paramount and arbitrary power under the 
familiar pretext of setting the Roman State in order ( tresviri 
reipublicae comtiluendae ). When a coalition seized power at Rome, 
it employed as instruments of domination the supreme magistracy 
in the city and the armies of the provinces. Depressed by the 
revived Dictatorship to little but a name, the consulate never 
afterwards recovered its authority. But prestige it still guaranteed, 
and the conferment of nobility. The dynasts made arrangements 
for some years in advance which provide some indication of the 
true balance of power and influence. 

Antonius constrained the young Caesar to resign the office he 
had seized. The rest of the year was given to P. Ventidius and 
C. Carrinas, a pair of consuls personifying the memory of the 
Btllum Italicum and the party of Marius. Lepidus appears to have 

1 Appian. IK' 3, 80, 329 (a certain J\ Decius, on whom cf. Phil. 1 1, 13; 13, 27). 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 189 

had few partisans of merit or distinction; which is not surprising. 
Of his lieutenants, Laterensis in shame took his own life; 
P. Canidius Crassus and Rufrenus were fervent Antonians; 1 M. 
Silanus, who had carried his messages to Antonius, soon fell 
away to the cause of the Republic. 2 The others were of no 
importance. Lepidus himself, however, was to have a second 
consulate in the next year, with Plancus as his colleague. For 
41 b.c. were designated P. Servilius Isauricus and L. Antonius; 
for 40 B.c., Pollio and Cn. Domitius Calvinus. The Caesarians 
Servilius and Calvinus were consulars already, and nobiles at that. 
Political compacts among the nobiles were never complete without 
a marriage-alliance: this time the soldiery insisted on a solid 
guarantee against dissension in the Caesarian party. Octavianus 
gave up his betrothed, the daughter of Servilius, and took 
Claudia instead, a daughter of Clodius and of Fulvia, hence the 
step-daughter of Antonius. 3 

Of the provinces of the West, Antonius for the present as¬ 
sumed control of the territories which he claimed by vote of the 
popular assembly, namely Gallia Cisalpina and Gallia Comata, 
dominant from geographical position and armed strength: he 
seems to have left his partisan Pollio as proconsul of the Cisalpina, 
perhaps to hold it for two years till his consulate (40 B.c.). 4 5 
Lepidus retained his old command, Gallia Narbonensis and Ili- 
spania Citerior, augmented with Hispania Ulterior—for Pollio 
gave up that province. To Octavianus fell a modest portion— 
Africa and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. The pos¬ 
session of Africa at this time was dubious, disputed in a local 
civil war for several years. 3 As for the islands, it may already 
have been feared, and it was soon to be known, that some of them 
had been seized by the adventurer Sex. Pompeius, acting in virtue 
of the maritime command assigned to him by the Senate earlier 
in the year for the war against Antonius. 

1 Ad Jam. 10, 21, 4. 

J At least he was with Sex. Pompeius in 39 B.c. (Velleius 2, 77, 3). 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 62, 1. 

4 Unless L. Antonius governed the Cisalpina in 42, Pollio not till 41. On 
January 1st, 41 b.c. L. Antonius inaugurated his consulate by a triumph over 
Alnine tribes: Dio, however, says ov 6 ’ oAoj? vyefjioviai’ eV rots' gojpLOis eVeiVot? €crg( 
(40. 4, 3) perhaps unjustly. Varius Cotvla was left in control of Comata in 
43 B.c. (Plutarch, Antonius 18): in 41 Ventidius and Calenus were there. 

5 The ex-Caesarian Q. Cornificius, proconsul of Africa Vetus in 44 b.c., 
remained there, loyal to the Senate against Antonius and refusing to recognize the 
Triumvirate. He then became involved in war with T. Sextius, the governor of 
Africa Nova. 



190 THE PROSCRIPTIONS 

The rule of the dynast Pompeius in 60 B.c. and during the 
years following depended upon control, open or secret, of the 
organs of government. Pompeius and his allies did not claim to 
he the government or the State: it was enough that their rivals 
should be thwarted and impotent. Caesar the Dictator pardoned 
his adversaries and facilitated their return to public life. The 
Triumvirs, however, decided to root out their opponents all at 
once, alleging in excuse the base ingratitude with which the 
Pompeians requited Caesar’s clemency. 1 The Caesarian leaders 
had defied public law .* they now abolished the private rights of 
citizenship—no disproportionate revenge for men who had been 
declared public enemies. 

Rome shivered under fear and portents. Soothsayers were 
duly summoned from Etruria. Of these experts the most vener¬ 
able exclaimed that the ancient monarchy was returning and died 
upon the spot, of his own will. 2 The scene may have been im¬ 
pressive, but the prophecy was superfluous. The three leaders 
marched to Rome and entered the city in ceremonial pomp on 
separate days. A Lex Tilia , voted on November 27th, established 
the Triumvirate according to the Pact of Bononia. There were 
many men alive who remembered Sulla. Often enough before 
now proscriptions had been the cause of secret apprehension, the 
pretext of hostile propaganda, or the substance of open menaces: 
‘Sulla potuit, ego non potero?’ 3 The realization surpassed all 
memory and all fears. As if to give a measure of their ruthless¬ 
ness, the Triumvirs inaugurated the proscriptions by the arrest 
and execution of a tribune of the Roman People. 4 

Roman society under the terror w itnessed the triumph of the 
dark passions of cruelty and revenge, of the ignoble vices of 
cupidity and treachery. The laws and constitution of Rome had 
been subverted. With them perished honour and security, family 
and friendship. Yet all was not unrelieved horror. History was 
to commemorate shining examples of courage or defiance, of 
loyal wives and faithful slaves; 5 and tales of strange vicissitudes 
and miraculous escapes adorned the many volumes which this 
unprecedented wealth of material evoked. 6 

1 Appian ( BC 4, 8, 31 ff.) gives what purports to be their official manifesto. 

2 lb. 4, 4, 15—perhaps the hamspex Vulcanius mentioned by Servius on Eel. 

9, 47- 3 Ad Att. 9, 10, 2 

4 Appian, BC 4, 17, 65. 5 e.g., the wife praised in ILS 8393. 

6 lb. 4, ;6, 64: 770 A Act 8’ cart, /cat ttoXXol ' PcofiaLcov tV TroAAat? /?t/?Aot? avra 

ovveypaxfmv e^>’ eaorwv. These stories went a long way towards compensating the 
lack of prose fiction among the Romans. 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 191 

For the youth of Octavianus, exposed to an iron schooling and 
constrained through form of law and not in the heat of battle to 
shed the noblest blood of Rome, compassion and even excuse 
was found in later generations. He composed his own auto¬ 
biography; other apologists artfully suggested that the merciful 
reluctance of Octavianus was overborne by the brutal insistence 
of his older and more hardened colleagues; and terrible stories 
were told of the rapacity and blood-lust of Fulvia. It may be 
doubted whether contemporaries agreed. If they had the leisure 
and the taste to draw fine distinctions between the three terror¬ 
ists, it was hardly for Octavianus that they invoked indulgence 
and made allowances. Regrets there may have been—to see a 
fine soldier and a Roman noble like Antonius reduced to such 
company and such expedients. For Antonius there was some 
palliation, at least—when consul he had been harried by faction 
and treason, when proconsul outlawed. For Octavianus there 
was none, and no merit beyond his name: l puer qui omnia 
nomini debes’, as Antonius had said, and many another. That 
splendid name was now dishonoured. Caesars heir was no 
longer a rash youth but a chill and mature terrorist. 1 Con¬ 
demnation and apology, however, are equally out of place. 2 

The Triumvirs were pitiless, logical and concordant. On the 
list of the proscriptions all told they set one hundred and thirty 
senators and a great number of Roman knights. 3 Their victory 
was the victory of a party. 4 Yet it was not their principal purpose 
to wipe out utterly both political adversaries and dissentient 
neutrals; and the total of victims was probably never as high as 
was believed with horror at the time, or uncritically since, per¬ 
petuated in fiction and in history; and in later days, personal 
danger and loss of estates were no doubt invented or enhanced 
by many astute individuals who owed security, if not enrichment, 
to the Caesarian party. 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 27, 1: ‘restitit quidem aliquamdiu collcgis nc qua fieret 
proscriptio, sed inceptam utroque acerbius exercuit.’ 

2 Rice Holmes, The Architect of the Roman Empire I, 71. 

3 Livy, Per. 120 (cf. Orosius 6,18, 10; Florus 2, 16, 3)— perhaps too low. Appian 
gives 300 senators ( BC 4, 5, 20, cf. 7, 28) and 2,000 knights. Plutarch’s figures 
range from 200 to 300 ( Cicero 46; Brutus 27; Antonius 20) —presumably senators. 
It is to be regretted that there is such a lack of evidence for the significant category, 
that of knights. In all, nearly 100 names of the proscribed have been recorded 
(Drumann-Groebe, Gesch. Roms l a , 470 ff.; H. Kloevekorn, De proscrip tionibus, &c., 
Diss. Konigsberg, 1891). 

4 On this, cf. especially M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capoparte 1, 229 ff.—who 
perhaps emphasizes too much the impersonal character of the proscriptions. 



192 the proscriptions 

Roman class-feeling and the common sentiments of humanity 
were revolted when Lepidus sacrificed his brother Paullus, 
Antonius his uncle, the elderly and blameless Republican L. Julius 
Caesar. Yet neither of these men perished, and the murderers 
claimed only one consular victim, M. Tullius Cicero. The Caesa¬ 
rian leaders proscribed their relatives—and other personages of 
distinction —more as a pledge of solidarity among themselves and 
to inspire terror among enemies and malcontents than from thirst 
for blood. Many of the proscribed got safely away and took 
refuge with the Liberators in the East or with Sex. Pompeius on 
the western seas and in the islands. There had been delay and 
warning enough. For the Triumvirs it was expedient to drive 
their political enemies out of the land, thus precluding any armed 
insurrection in Italy when they settled accounts with the Libera¬ 
tors. Cicero could have escaped—through indecision he lingered 
until too late. His murder disgraced the Triumvirs and enriched 
literature with an immortal theme. 1 

But the fugitives could not take their property with them; 
some of the proscribed remained in Italy, under collusion and 
protection, or returned soon, saving their lives but making a sacri¬ 
fice in money. 2 There had been an extenuating feature of faction- 
contests at Rome—the worst extremities could sometimes be 
avoided, among the aristocracy at least. Sulla had many enemies 
among the nobiles , but certain of the more eminent, through 
family connexions and social influence, had been able to evade pro¬ 
scription, such as the father of Brutus and others. The decadence 
of legal authority and the ever-present threat of civil war enhanced 
the value of the personal tie and led men to seek powerful 
protection in advance. The banker Atticus was not put on the 
list even for form’s sake or as a warning to others: he had recently 
shown conspicuous kindness to the wife and family of Antonius the 
public enemy, thereby incurring blame in certain circles, 3 but trust¬ 
ing his own judgement; and he had already secured a guarantee 
for the event of a Republican victory by protecting the mother 
of Brutus. 4 Atticus was also able to save the knight L. Julius 

1 There are full accounts of his end in Livy (quoted by Seneca, Suasoriac 6 , 17); 
Plutarch, Cicero 47 f.; Appian, BC 4, 19, 73 ff. The best obituary notice was 
Pollio’s (quoted by Seneca, Suasoriac 6, 24), admitting faults but condoning—‘sed 
quando mortalium nulli virtus perfccta contigit, qua maior pars vitae atque ingenii 
stetit, ca iudicandum de homine est.’ 

2 Pardon and return after a year is attested by ILS 8393. 

3 Ncpos, Vita Attici 9, 7: ‘a nonnullis optimatibus reprehendebatur, quod parum 

odisse malos cives videretur.’ 4 lb. n, 4. 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 193 

Calidus, famed as a poet, but only among his contemporaries; 1 
and the aged M. Terentius Varro, once a soldier and a governor of 
provinces, but now a peaceful antiquary, found harbourage in the 
house of Calenus. 2 

Foresight and good investments preserved Atticus: his wealth 
alone should have procured his doom. The Caesarian party was 
fighting the Republicans at Rome as it was soon to fight them in 
the East. But the struggle was not purely political in character: 
it came to resemble a class-war and in the process transformed 
and consolidated the Caesarian party. 

Yet there were personal and local causes everywhere. Under 
guise of partisan zeal, men compassed, for profit or for revenge, 
the proscription of private enemies. Many a long-standing contest 
for wealth and power in the towns of Italy was now decided. 
The Coponii were an ancient family of Tibur: 3 the proscription 
of a Coponius may fairly be put down to Plautus. 4 A brother 
and a nephew of Plancus were also on the lists. 5 Pollio’s rivals 
among the Marrucini will likewise have been found there : () his own 
father-in-law was also proscribed. 7 Such respectable examples 
conferred sanction upon crime and murder, if any were needed, 
among the propertied classes of the municipia , publicly lauded for 
the profession of ancient virtue, but avid and unscrupulous in 
their secret deeds. The town of Larinum will surely have lived up 
to its reputation. 8 Elsewhere the defeated and impoverished sur¬ 
vivors of earlier struggles rose up again, rapacious and vindictive. 
The fierce Marsians and Paelignians had long and bitter memories. 
Yet some of the proscribed were saved by civic virtue, personal 
influence or local patriotism. The citizens of Gales manned the 
walls and refused to deliver up Sittius. 9 Lucilius Hirrus, a great 

1 Nepos, Vita Attici 12, 4: according to Nepos, he was by far the most elegant 
poet since Lucretius and Catullus. Otherwise quite unknown. 

2 Appian, BC 4, 47, 202 f. 

3 Pro Balbo 53; cf. 1 LS 3700 (an aedile of that family). 

4 Appian, BC 4, 40, 170: for later enmity of that family towards Plancus, cf. 
Velleius 2, 83, 3, below, p. 283. 

5 His brother Gaius, otherwise known as L. Plotius Plancus, was proscribed 
and killed (Pliny, NH 13, 25). M. Titius, however, nephew of Plancus, made his 
escape (Dio 48, 30, 5) and later rose to resplendent fortune in the company of 
Plancus. 

6 Urbinius Panapio (Val. Max. 6, 8, 6) may have been a Marrucine: an Urbinia 
certainly married the Marrucine Clusinius (Quintilian 7, 2, 26), and Pollio sub¬ 
sequently defended her heirs in a famous lawsuit. 

7 Namely L. Quinctius, of unascertained origin, who perished at sea (Appian, 

BC 4, 27, 114). 8 Pro CluentiOy passim. 

y Appian, BC 4, 47, 201 f. This Sittius—presumably a relative of P. Sittius 
of Nuceria -had spent money on Cales. 



i 9 4 THE PROSCRIPTIONS 

landowner, mustered his adherents and tenants, armed the slaves 
and fought his way through Italy to the sea coasts. 1 

Arruntius did the same. 2 The Arruntii were an opulent 
family at Atina, a Volscian town, perhaps not of senatorial rank. 3 
A large number of local aristocrats supported Caesar ; 4 and some 
will have remained loyal to the Caesarian party. Certain wealthy 
families, such as the Aelii Lamiae from Formiae or the Vinicii of 
Cales, who are not known to have been proscribed, either enjoyed 
protection already or now purchased it. 5 

The ambition of generals like Pompeius and Caesar provoked 
civil war without intending or achieving a revolution. Caesar, 
being in close contact w r ith powerful financial interests and 
representatives of the landed gentry, was averse from any radical 
redistribution of property in Italy. He maintained the grants of 
Sulla. Further, many of his colonies were established on pro¬ 
vincial soil, sparing Italy. A party prevailed when Caesar 
defeated Pompeius—yet the following of Caesar was by no means 
homogeneous, and the Dictator stood above parties. He did not 
champion one class against another. If he had begun a revolution, 
his next act was to stem its advance, to consolidate the existing 
order. Nor would Antonius and his associates have behaved as 
they did, could security and power be won in any other way. 
The consequences of compelling a general to appeal to his army 
in defence of life or honour were now apparent—the generals 
themselves were helpless in the hands of the legions. The pro¬ 
letariat of Italy, long exploited and thwarted, seized what they 
regarded as their just portion. A social revolution was now carried 
out, in tw r o stages, the first to provide money for the war, the 
second to rew r ard the Caesarian legions after victory. 

War and the threat of taxation or confiscation drives money 
underground. It must be lured out again. Capital could only be 
tempted by a good investment. The Caesarian leaders therefore 
seized houses and estates and put them on the market. Their 
own partisans, astute neutrals and frecdmen of the commercial 
class got value for their money in the solid form of landed 


1 Appian, BC 4, 43, 180. On this person, a cousin of Pompeius Magnus, ef. 

above, p. 31, n. 1. 2 Appian, BC 4, 46, 195. 

3 CL IBS 5349. This is the family of the Pompeian L. Arruntius, cos. 22 B.c., 

below, p. 425. 4 Above, p. 82. 

5 On the Aelii Lamiae, ef. above, pp. 81 and 83; on the origin of the Vinicii 
(L. Vinicius, cos. suff. 33 n.t\, and M. Vinicius, cos. sujf. 19 h.c.), cf. Tacitus, Anti. 6, 
15. An inscr. from Cales {L’ann. cp. y 1929, 166) mentions M. Vinicius, cos. a.i>. 30, 
cos. n a.d. 45). 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 195 

property. Freedmen, as usual, battened upon the blood of citizens. 1 

The proscriptions may not unfairly be regarded as in purpose 
and essence a peculiar levy upon capital. As in Sulla’s proscrip¬ 
tion, uobiles and political adversaries might head the list: the bulk 
is made up by the names of obscure senators or Roman knights. 
The nobiles were not necessarily the wealthiest of the citizens: 
men of property, whatever their station, were the real enemies of 
the Triumvirs. In concord, senators and business men upheld the 
existing order and prevented a reconstitution of the old Roman 
People through a more equitable division of landed property in 
Italy; now they were companions in adversity. The beneficiaries of 
Sulla suffered at last. The Triumvirs declared a regular vendetta 
against the rich, 2 whether dim, inactive senators or pacific knights, 
anxiously abstaining from Roman politics. That was no defence. 

Varro was an old Pompeian, politically innocuous by now: but 
he was also the owner of great estates. 3 Likewise Lucilius Hirrus, 
the kinsman of Pompeius, noted for his fish-ponds. 4 Statius, 
the octogenarian Samnite, who survived the Helium Italicum 
and became a Roman senator, now perished for his wealth; 5 so 
did M. Fidustius, who had been proscribed by Sulla, and the 
notorious C. Vcrres, an affluent exile. 0 The knight Calidus had 
property in Africa. 7 Cicero, though chronically in straits for 
ready money, was a very wealthy man: his villas in the country 
and the palatial town house once owned by Livius Drusus cried 
out for confiscation. 8 

But a capital levy often defeats its own purpose. The return 
was at once seen to be disappointing. From virtue or from 
caution, men refused to purchase estates as they came upon the 
market. Money soared in value. The Triumvirs then imposed a 
levy upon the possessions of opulent females, arousing indignant 
protest. 0 Intimidated by a deputation of Roman ladies with a 
great Republican personage for leader, the daughter of the orator 
Hortensius, they abated their demands a little, but did not 

Pliny, NH 35, 201: ‘quos enumerarc iam non cst, sanguine Quiritium et 
proscriptionum licentia ditatos/ 

2 Dio 47, 6, 5 : Koivrjv nva Kara tmv ttXovoiow t)( 9 pav 7Tpooedcvro. 

3 D. Brutus spoke about ‘Varronis thensauros’ (Ad Jam . 11, 10, 5). On the 
friends of Varro, wealthy landowners, cf. above, p. 31. 

4 In 45 n.c. he was able to provide Caesar with six thousand muracnae for a 
triumphal banquet (Pliny, Nil 9, 171). 

5 Appian, BC 4, 25, 102. 6 Pliny, NH 7, 134; 34, 6. 

7 Nepos, Vita Attici 12,4. Antonius’ agent P. Volumnius Eutrapelus had his eye on it. 

8 The town mansion, which had cost 3,500,000 sesterces, fell to the Antonian 

noble L. Marcius Censorinus (Velleius 2, 14, 3). 9 Appian, BC 4, 32, 136 ff. 



196 the proscriptions 

abandon the principle. Other taxes, novel and crushing, were 
invented—for example a year’s income being taken from every¬ 
body in possession of the census of a Roman knight; 1 and at the 
beginning of the next year a fresh list was drawn up, confiscating 
real property only. 2 

Hitherto the game of politics at Rome had been financed by 
the spoils of the provinces, extorted by senators and by knights 
in competition or in complicity, and spent by senators for their 
own magnificence and for the delight of the Roman plebs; the 
knights had saved their gains and bought landed property. The 
Roman citizen in Italy was subject to no kind of taxation, direct 
or indirect. But now Rome and Italy had to pay the costs of civil 
war, in money and land. There was no other source for the 
Caesarians to draw upon, for the provinces of the West were 
exhausted, the revenues of the East in the hands of the Re¬ 
publicans. From Italy, therefore, had to be found the money 
to pay the standing army of the Caesarians, which numbered 
some forty-three legions. So much for present needs. For the 
future, to recompense the legions which were to be led against 
the Republicans, the Triumvirs set apart the territories of eighteen 
of the most wealthy cities of Italy. 3 What had already happened 
was bad enough. After the victory of the Caesarians impended 
the second act in social revolution. 

'The foundations of the new order were cemented with the 
blood of citizens and buttressed with a despotism that made 
men recall the Dictatorship of Caesar as an age of gold. 4 "Thinned 
by war and proscription, the Senate was now replenished to 
overflowing with the creatures of the Triumvirs: before long 
it was to number over a thousand. 5 Scorn and ridicule had 
greeted the nominees of the Dictator: with the ignominy of the 
new senators of the Triumviral period they could not have com¬ 
peted. Not only aliens or men of low origin and infamous 
pursuits—even escaped slaves could be detected. 6 As with the 
recruitment of the Senate, all rules and all propriety were now 
cast off in the choice of magistrates, nominated as they were, not 

1 Appian, BC 4, 34, 146; Dio 47, 14, 2. 2 Dio 47, 16, 1. 

1 Appian, B(J 4, 3, 10 f. Among tlu*m were Capua. Rhegium, Venusia, Bcnevcn- 

turn, Nuceria, Ariminutn and Vibo Valentia. 

’ Dio 47, 15, 4: ojcttc ^ pvcroi’ rip' roO Kalrrapos fioimpylav (fxivfjvai. 

5 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 35, 1 ; Dio 52, 42, 1. 

6 Dio 48, 34, 5; Jerome, (Airon., p. 158 11; Digest 1, 14, 3. A certain Barbarius 
Philippus actually became praetor (Dig. ib.): not to be identified with M. Barbatius 
Pollio, quaestor of Antonius in 40 u.e., cf. PIR 2 , B 50. 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 


197 

elected. Sixteen praetors were created by Caesar, a rational and 
even necessary reform: one year of the Triumvirate witnessed no 
fewer than sixty-seven. 1 The Triumvirs soon introduced the 
practice of nominating several pairs of consuls for a single year 
and designating them a long time in advance. 

Of consulars and men of authority in the Senate there was a 
singular dearth, recalling the days when Cinna was dominant at 
Rome. In December of the year 44 B.e. the Senate had been able 
to count only seventeen ex-consuls, the majority of whom were 
absent from Rome, ailing in health or remote from political 
interests. 2 The interval of a year carried off three, Ser. Sulpicius 
Rufus, Trebonius and Cicero, without notable accessions— 
Hirtius, Pansa and Dolabella had fallen in war, and the consul 
Q. Pedius succumbed early in his tenure of office, stricken by 
shame and horror, it was alleged, at the proscriptions which it was 
his duty to announce. 3 If the three dynasts be excluded, the 
surviving consulars now numbered twelve at the most, probably 
less. P. Vatinius celebrates a triumph in 42 B.e .; 4 a 'Triumvir’s 
uncle, C. Antonius, becomes censor in the same year ; then both 
disappear. 5 'Two honest men, L. Piso and L. Caesar, lapse com¬ 
pletely from record. Philippus and Marcellus had played their 
part for Caesar’s heir and served their turn : they departed to die 
in peace. Lepidus’ brother, the proscribed Paullus, retired to 
Miletus and lived on for a time unmolested. 0 

Of the supposed dozen survivors among the consulars, only 
three claim any mention in subset]uent history, and only one for 
long. The renegade from the Catonian party, P. Servilius, 
grasped the prize of intrigue and ambition—a second consulate 
from the Triumvirs (41 B.e.), like his first from Caesar: after that 
he is not heard of again. Antonius’ adherent Q. Fufius Calenus 
held a military command and died in 40 B.e.; but the Caesarian 
nobitis Cn. Domitius Calvinus prolonged an active career after 
that date, the solitary relic of a not very distant past. 

Less spectacular than the decadence of the principes , but not 
less to be deplored, were the gaps in other ranks and orders. The 
bulk of the nobi/es, both ex-Pompeians and adherents of Caesar, 
banished from Italy, were with the Liberators or with Sex. 
Pompeius. With Pompeius they found a refuge, with Brutus and 
Cassius a party and a cause, armies of Roman legions and the 
hope of vengeance. 

1 Dio 48, 43, 2. 2 Above, p. 164. 3 Appian, BC 4, 6, 26. 

4 CIL i 2 , p. 50. 5 lb. r, p. 64, cf. J/.S 6204. 6 Appian, BC 4, 37, 155. 



i 9 S THK PROSCRIPTIONS 

When a civil war seemed only a contest of factions in the Roman 
nobility, many young men of spirit and distinction chose Caesar 
in preference to Pompeius and the oligarchy; but they would not 
tolerate Caesar’s ostensible political heirs and the declared enemies 
of their own class. The older men were dead, dishonoured or 
torpid: the young nobiles went in a body to the camp of Brutus 
and Cassius, eagerly or with the energy of despair. Six years 
earlier the cause of the Republic beyond the seas was repre¬ 
sented by Pompeius, a group of consulars in alliance and the 
Catonian faction. 1 Now the Metelli, the Scipiones, the Lentuli 
and the Marcelli were in eclipse, for the heads of those families 
had mostly perished, leaving few sons; 2 there was not a single 
man of consular rank in the party; its rallying point and its 
leaders were the young men of the faction of Cato, almost all 
kinsmen of Marcus Brutus. 

When Brutus left Italy, he was accompanied or followed by his 
relatives Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and M. Licinius Lucullus, 3 4 
by political adherents like the inseparable Favonius and by his 
own personal friends and agents of equestrian rank, such as the 
banker C. Flavius, with no heart for war but faithful to the end/ 
At Athens he found a welcome and support among the Roman 
youth there pursuing the higher education, sons of senators like 
L. Bibulus, his own stepson, and M. Cicero, 5 * along with men of 
lower station. 1 ’ Then Caesarian officials joined the cause, first 
I lortensius, the proconsul of Macedonia, and the retiring quaestors 
of Asia and Syria; 7 and from Italy there came sympathizers, 
among them M. Valerius Mcssalla, a noble youth of talent and 
distinction. 8 * Three Caesarian generals joined Cassius in Syria/ 
Trebonius the proconsul of Asia had been put to death by Dola- 
bella; but his quaestor P. Lentulus, the son of Spinther, was 
active with a fleet for the Republic. 10 Most of the assassins of 
Caesar had no doubt left Italy at an early date; and the party was 


1 Above, p. 43. 

2 C. MarcelJus (cos. 50 n.c.) was still alive: for the sons and relatives of the others, 
the only record in the years 43 -39 b.c. is a Metellus and a Lentulus among the 
proscribed (Appian, BC 4, 42, 175 ; ib. 39, 164) and Spinther’s son, quaestor under 
Trebonius (below, n. 9). 

1 Ad Att. 16, 4, 4 (Ahenobarbus); Velleius 2, 71, 2 (Lucullus). 

4 Ad M. Brutum 1, 17, 3. He fell in battle, Plutarch, Brutus 51. 5 Ib. 1, 14, 1. 

0 For example, the freedman’s son Q. Horatius Flaccus. 7 Above, p. 171. 

8 Ad M. Brutum 1, 12, 1, cf. 15, 1. He was the son of the consul of 61 u.c. His 

half-brother, L. Hellius Popheola, was also with Brutus for a time, but acted 

treacherously (Dio 47, 24, 3 ff.). g Above, p. 171. 

10 Ad Jam. 12, 14 f.; BMC, R. Rep. n, 481 ff. 



THE PROSCRIPTIONS 199 

further strengthened by the arrival of miscellaneous Republican 
or Pompeian nobles, old and young. 1 

The Caesarian party, though reunited after strange vicissi¬ 
tudes, had suffered heavy loss both in ability and in distinction, 
and showed its revolutionary character by its composition as well 
as by its policy. The Triumvirs had expelled from Italy not only 
the nobiles, their political enemies, but their victims as well, men 
of substance and repute from the towns of Italy. 

Change and casualties are most clearly evident among the 
army commanders. Of the imposing company of Caesar’s legates 
in the Gallic Wars 2 almost all were now dead. After the estab¬ 
lishment of the Triumvirate, four of them are found holding high 
command. Of these, T. Sextius and Q. Fuflus Calenus soon dis¬ 
appear. Only Antonius and Plancus remain. The Dictator’s 
provincial governors and commanders in his civil wars naturally 
fare better; 3 but two of them at least, having passed over to the 
Liberators, curtailed their own survival. 4 

Few men indeed who already belonged to the Senate before 
the outbreak of the Civil War achieve the highest distinction 
under the domination of the Triumvirs. The consulate falls in 
the main to the newest of the new, senators nominated by the 
Dictator or introduced after his death, most of them absent from 
historical record before 44 B.c. Ventidius and Carrinas lead the 
pack and inaugurate an epoch, as clearly manifest in its consuls 
as had been the last and transient supremacy of the oligarchy: 
strange names of alien root or termination now invade and dis¬ 
figure the Fasti of the Roman People. 

A new generation of marshals enters the field, almost all non- 
Latin in their nomenclature. Some had held independent com¬ 
mand under Caesar: Allienus and Staius are soon heard of no more, 
but C. Calvisius Sabinus goes steadily forward. 5 Others, rising 

1 For example, M. Livius Drusus Claudianus and Sex. Quinctilius Varus 
(Velleius 2, 71, 3); also the pertinacious young Pompeian, Cn. Calpurnius Piso 
(Tacitus, Ann. 2, 43). For the coinage of the Liberators and their lieutenants, cf. 
BMC , R. Rep. 11, 471 ff. 

2 Above, p. 67. 

3 For example, C. Calvisius Sabinus, C. Carrinas and Sex. Peducaeus. Also 
L. Nonius Asprenas, now revealed as cos. sujj. in 36 (cf. the new Fasti of the Vico- 
magistri , L'ann. ep. } 1937, 62: shortly to be published by A. Degrassi in Inscr. Jt. 
xni, part 1); and perhaps Q. Marcius Crispus, if he be the Marcius who also was 
cos. suff. in that year. Nothing is known of the services to the Triumvirs of either 
Asprenas or of any person called Marcius. 

4 L. Staius Murcus was active for the Republic until killed by Sex. Pompeius. 
A. Allienus disappears completely after 43 b.c. 

5 Consul in 39 B.c. and admiral for Octavianus in the Bellum Siculum. Calvisius 



200 THE PROSCRIPTIONS 

from earlier posts of subordination, gave sign and guarantee of 
success, but did not survive. Saxa and Fango were to be cut off 
in their prime, cheated of the consulate; Octavius the Marsian, 
‘the accursed brigand’, perished with Dolabella; 1 another 
Marsian, Poppaedius Silo, gained only brief glory. 2 The pace was 
fast, the competition ferocious. The ranks of the military men find 
steady accessions as battle, failure or treachery provide victims 
and vacancies. Persons of some permanence also emerge before 
long, rising to consular rank, P. Canidius Crassus, C. Norbanus 
Flaccus, of a proscribed family, and C. Sosius, perhaps a Picene, 
none of them heard of before Caesar’s death. 3 Another novelty was 
the mysterious family of the Cocceii, which furnished Antonius 
with generals and diplomats—and secured two consulates : 4 they 
were Umbrian in origin. s These were among the earliest to find 
mention. Then other marshals and consuls turn up—L. Corni- 
ficius, whose unknown antecedents endowed him with the talents 
for success; Q. Laronius, commemorated only as an admiral, and 
T. Statilius Taurus, a formidable character/’ Other new consuls 
remain enigmatic—L. Caninius Callus, T. Peducaeus, M. Heren- 
nius the Picene and L. Vinicius, who have left no record of 
service to the rulers of Rome but, as sole and sufficient proof, the 
presence of their names upon the Fasti . 7 

The Antonians Decidius, Ventidius and Canidius, all famed 


is the first consul with a gmtilicium ending in ‘-isius’: non-Latin, cf. ‘Carisius’. 
His origin is unknown. The dedication ILS 925 (Spoletium) should belong to him 
(below, p. 221) but C 1 L ix, 414 (Canusium) perhaps to his son or his grandson. 

1 Dio 47, 30, 5. Cf. Cicero, Phil. 11,4. 2 Dio 48, 41, 1 fF. 

3 C. Norbanus was admitted to honours by Caesar: the ending of th v gentilicium is 
palpably non-Latin, perhaps indicating Etruscan origin or influence, cf. W. Schulze, 
LE , 531 fF. Miinzer, however, argues that he came from the ancient colony of 
Norba, P-W xvii, 926. Canidius may be the man who was with Cato in Cyprus in 
57 B.c. (Plutarch, Cato Minor 35). The name‘Canidius’, familiar enough to litera¬ 
ture from 1 lorace’s witch Canidia, is exceedingly rare : Schulze gives no epigraphic 
examples of it. The origin of C. Sosius is unknown : but observe the Roman knight 
from Picenum, Q. Sosius, who attempted to set tire to the public archives (Cicero, 
De natura deorum 3, 74). 

4 C. Coceeius Balbus (cos. suff. 39), M. Cocceius Nerva (cos. suff. 36) and 
L. Cocceius Nerva (never consul): the new Fasti have shown which Cocceius 
was consul in 39. See also below, p. 267. 

5 From Narnia, cf. Victor, Epit. de Caes. 12, 1. 

6 On whom cf. below, p. 237. Statilius is presumably Lueanian in origin. 

7 About L. Caninius Callus (10s. 37 B.r.) nothing is known, save that his father 
married a first cousin of M. Antonius (Val. Max. 4, 2, 6). For the family of 
T. Peducaeus (cos. suff. 35), cf. below, p. 235. M. Herennius (cos. suff. 34) was 
presumably Picene, cf. above, p. 92. Another historical nonentity, of better descent 
however, was Sex. Pompeius (cos. 35 B.c\), the grandson of Pompeius Strabo’s 
brother. For the Vimcii, above, p. 194. 



201 


THE PROSCRIPTIONS 

for victory or defeat in the eastern lands, became the proverbial 
trio among the novi homines of the Revolution. 1 Which is appro¬ 
priate, given the rarity and non-Latin termination of their family 
names. But the Antonians were not the worst. Advancement 
unheard of now smiled upon the avid, the brutal and the un¬ 
scrupulous: even youth became a commendation, when posses¬ 
sion of neither traditions nor property could dull the edge of 
action. From the beginning, the faction of Octavianus invited 
those who had nothing to lose from war and adventure, among 
the ‘foundation-members’ being Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus. 
Octavianus himself had only recently passed his twentieth birth¬ 
day: Agrippa’s age was the same to a year. Salvidienus, the 
earliest and greatest of his marshals, of origin no more dis¬ 
tinguished than Agrippa, was his senior in years and military 
experience. His example showed that the holding of senatorial 
office was not an indispensable qualification for leading armies of 
Roman legions. But Salvidienus was not unique: foreigners or 
freed slaves might compete with knights for military command 
in the wars of the Revolution. 2 

The Republic had been abolished. Whatever the outcome of 
the armed struggle, it could never be restored. Despotism ruled, 
supported by violence and confiscation. The best men were dead 
or proscribed. The Senate was packed with ruffians, the consu¬ 
late, once the reward of civic virtue, now became the recompense 
of craft or crime. 

‘Non mos, non ius.’ 3 So might the period be described. But 
the Caesarians claimed a right and a duty that transcended all 
else, the avenging of Caesar. Pietas prevailed, and out of the 
blood of Caesar the monarchy was born. 

1 Seneca, Suasoriae 7, 3: ‘vivet inter Ventidios et Canidios et Saxas.’ 

2 Demetrius for Antonius (Dio 48, 40, 5 f.), Helenus for Octavianus (Dio 48, 30, 
8, cf. 45, 5; Appian, BC 5, 06 , 277; ILS 6267). Also Herod the Idumaean, in 
temporary charge of two Roman legions sent to him by Ventidius under the com¬ 
mand of an enigmatic alien called Machaeras (Josephus, BJ 1, 317, &c.). The name 
might really be ‘Machares’, which occurs in the royal house of Pontus. 

3 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 28. 



XV. PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 


O N the first day of the new year Senate and magistrates took 
a solemn oath to maintain the acts of Caesar the Dictator. 
More than this, Caesar was enrolled among the gods of the Roman 
State. 1 In the Forum a temple was to be built to the new deity, 
Divus Julius', and another law made provision for the cult in the 
towns of Italy. 2 The young Caesar could now designate himself 
‘Divi films’. 

Under the sign of the avenging of Caesar, the Caesarian armies 
made ready for war. The leaders decided to employ twenty-eight 
legions. Eight of these they dispatched in advance across the 
Adriatic under C. Norbanus Flaccus and L. Decidius Saxa, who 
marched along the Via Egnatia across Macedonia, passed Philippi, 
and took up a favourable position. Antonius and Octavianus pro¬ 
posed to follow. Their colleague Lepidus was left behind in 
nominal charge of Rome and Italy. The real control rested with 
Antonius, for one of his partisans, Calenus, seems to have com¬ 
manded two legions established in Italy, 3 while Pollio held the 
Cisalpina with a strong army. 4 

At first there was delay. Octavianus turned aside to deal with 
Sex. Pompeius, who by now had won possession of all Sicily, 
sending Salvidienus against him. 5 Lack of ships frustrated an 
invasion of the island. As for Antonius, he was held up at 
Brundisium by a hostile navy under the Republican admiral 
Staius Murcus. When Octavianus arrived, the Caesarian fleet was 
strong enough to force the passage. Their supremacy at sea was 
short-lived. Pompeius, it is true, did not intervene; but Cn. 
Domitius Ahenobarbus, coming up with a large part of the fleet 
of Brutus and Cassius, reinforced Murcus and won complete 
control of the seas between Italy and the Balkans. The com¬ 
munications of the Caesarians were cut: they must advance and 
hope for a speedy decision on land. Antonius pressed on: the 
young Caesar, prostrate from illness, lingered at Dyrrhachium. 

1 Dio 47, 18, 3. 

2 The Lex Rufrena , 1 LS 73 and 73 a. Rufrenus was a Caesarian {Ad Jam. io, 
21, 4, above, p. 189). - 1 Appian, BC 5, 12, 46, cf. Dio 48, 2, 3. 

4 Above, p. 189. There is no evidence of the whereabouts of P. Ventidius in 
42 fc.c.: Gallia Cornata? Cf. p. 210. 

5 Appian, BC 4, 85, 358; Dio 48, 18, 1; sling-bullets found near Rhegium with 
the legend ‘Q. Sal. im(p.)’, CIL x, 8337, p. 1001. 



PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 203 

In the meantime, Brutus and Cassius had been gathering the 
wealth and the armies of the East. Not long after the Battle of 
Mutina, Brutus departed from the coast of Albania and marched 
eastwards. A campaign in Thrace secured money and the loyalty 
of the native chieftains. Then, crossing into Asia, he met Cassius 
at Smyrna towards the end of the year 43. Cassius had a success 
to report. He had encountered Dolabella, defeated him in battle 
and besieged him at Laodicaea in Syria. In despair Dolabella took 
his own life: Trebonius was avenged. Except for Egypt, whose 
Queen had helped Dolabella, and the recalcitrance of Rhodes 
and the cities of Lycia, the Caesarian cause had suffered complete 
eclipse in the East. 

Brutus and Cassius now took counsel for war. Even when 
Antonius joined Lepidus and Plancus, Brutus may not have 
abandoned all hope of an accommodation—with East and West 
so evenly matched between Republicans and Caesarians, the 
doubtful prospect of a long and ruinous struggle was a potent 
argument for concord. Brutus and Antonius might have under¬ 
stood each other and compromised for peace and for Rome: the 
avenging of Caesar and the extermination of the Liberators had 
not been Antonius’ policy when he was consul. But with Caesar s 
heir there could be no pact or peace. 1 When the Caesarian leaders 
united to establish a military dictatorship and inaugurate a class- 
war, there was no place left for hesitation. Under this conviction 
a Roman aristocrat and a Roman patriot now had to sever the 
tics of friendship, class and country, and bring himself to inflict 
the penalty of death upon the brother of Antonius. When Brutus 
heard of the end of Cicero, it was not so much sorrow as shame 
that he felt for Rome. 2 

For good reasons Brutus and Cassius decided not to carry the 
war into Italy in winter or even in summer, but to occupy the 
time by organizing their resources and raising more money: so 
several months of the following year were spent in chastising 
Rhodians and Lycians and draining the wealth of Asia. Brutus 
and Cassius met again at Ephesus. In the late summer of 42 
their armies passed the Hellespont, nineteen legions and numerous 
levies from the dependent princes of the East. 

Wisdom after the event scores easy triumphs—the Republican 



204 PHILIPPI AND PERIJSIA 

cause, it is held, was doomed from the beginning, defeat in¬ 
evitable. Not only this—Brutus was prescient and despondent, 
warned by the ghost of Caesar. On the contrary, Brutus at last 
was calm and decided. After the triumph of the Caesarian 
generals and the institution of the proscriptions he knew where 
he stood. 

Brutus himself was no soldier by repute, no leader of men. 
But officers and men knew and respected the tried merit of 
Cassius. The best of the legions, it is true, were Caesarian 
veterans. Yet the soldiers welcomed Cassius when he arrived in 
Syria more than eighteen months earlier, and rallied promptly. 
That was the only weak spot in the forces of the Republic: would 
the legions stand against the name and fortune of Caesar? From 
his war-chest Cassius paid the men fifteen hundred denarii a head 
and promised more. 1 

For the rest, the prospects of Brutus and Cassius left little to 
be desired. Their plan was simple—to hold up the enemy and 
avoid battle. They commanded both the Ionian Sea and the 
Aegean. If they were able to prolong the campaign into the 
winter months, the lack of supplies would disperse the Caesarian 
legions over the desolate uplands of Macedonia or pen them 
within the narrow bounds of an impoverished Greece. 

Brutus and Cassius marched westwards. Out-manoeuvring and 
throwing back the advance guards of the Caesarians under Nor- 
banus and Saxa, they arrived in the vicinity of Philippi, where 
they took up a strong position astride the Via Egnatia, invulner¬ 
able on the flanks, which rested to the north against mountains, 
to the south on a marsh. Brutus pitched his camp on the right 
wing, Cassius on the left. They had leisure to unite and fortify 
their front. 

Then Antoni us arrived. Working his way through the marsh 
to the south around the flank of Cassius, he at last forced on a 
battle. Octavianus had now come up—though shattered in health 
and never a soldier, he could not afford to resign to Antonius the 
sole credit of victory. The battle was indecisive. Brutus on the 
right flank swept over the Caesarian lines and captured the camp 
of Octavianus, who was not there. A certain mystery envelops his 
movements: on his own account he obeyed a warning dream 
which had visited his favourite doctor. 2 The other wing of the 

1 Appian, BC 4, 100, 422. 

2 Even admitted by the apologetic Velleius (2, 70, 1). There was plenty to be 
explained away in the Autobiography , cf. F. Blumenthal, Wiener Studien xxxv 



PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 205 

Caesarians, led by Antonius, broke through the front of Cassius 
and pillaged his camp. Cassius despaired too soon. Unaware of 
the brilliant success of Brutus on the right wing, deceived per¬ 
haps, as one account runs, through a defect of his eyesight 1 and 
believing that all was lost, Cassius fell upon his sword. Such was 
the first Battle of Philippi (October 23rd). 2 

Both sides drew back, damaged and resentful. There followed 
three weeks of inaction or slow manoeuvres in which the advan¬ 
tage gradually passed to the Caesarians. Otherwise their situation 
was desperate, for on the day of the first Battle of Philippi the 
Republican admirals in the Ionian Sea intercepted and destroyed 
the fleet of Domitius Calvinus, who was conveying two legions to 
Dyrrhachium. 3 It was not the ghost of Caesar but an incalculable 
hazard, the loss of Cassius, that brought on the doom of the 
Republic. Brutus could win a battle but not a campaign. Pro¬ 
voked by the propaganda and the challenges of the Caesarians and 
impatient of delay, officers and men clamoured that he should try 
the fortune of battle again. Moreover, eastern princes and their 
levies were deserting. Brutus gave way at last. 

After a tenacious and bloody contest, the Caesarian army pre¬ 
vailed. Once again the Balkan lands witnessed a Roman disaster and 
entombed the armies of the Republic—‘Romani bustum populi’. 4 
This time the decision was final and irrevocable, the last struggle 
of the Free State. Henceforth nothing but a contest of despots 
over the corpse of liberty. The men who fell at Philippi fought for 
a principle, a tradition and a class—narrow, imperfect and out¬ 
worn, but for all that the soul and spirit of Rome. 

No battle of all the Civil Wars was so murderous to the 
aristocracy. 5 Among the fallen were recorded the noblest names 
of Rome. No consulars, it is true, for the best of the principes 
were already dead, and the few survivors of that order cowered 
ignominious and forgotten in Rome or commanded the armies 
that destroyed the Republic along with their new allies and peers 
in rank, Ventidius and Carrinas. On the field of Philippi fell the 
younger Hortensius, once a Caesarian, Cato’s son, a Lucullus, a 

(1913), 280 f. Agrippa and Maecenas did not deny that Oetavianus lurked in a 
marsh (Pliny, NH 7, 148). 1 Plutarch, Brutus 43. 

2 The date is given by the Calendar of Praeneste, L'ann. cp. } 1922, 96. Cf. 
C. Hulsen, Strena Buliciana (1924), 193 If. 

3 Appian, BC 4, 115, 479 ff.; Dio 47, 47, 4; Plutarch, Brutus 47. 

4 As the poet Lucan observed of Pharsalus (7, 862). 

5 Velleius 2, 71, 2: ‘non aliud bellum eruentius caede clarissimorum virorum 
fuit.’ 



206 PIIILIPPI AND PERUSIA 

Livius Drusus. 1 Brutus, their own leader, took his own life. 
Virtus had proved to be an empty word. 2 

The victor Antonius stripped off his purple cloak and cast it 
over the body of Brutus. 3 They had once been friends. As 
Antonius gazed in sorrow upon the Roman dead, the tragedy of 
his own life may have risen to his thoughts. Brutus had divined 
it—Antonius, he said, might have been numbered with Cato, 
with Brutus and with Cassius: he had surrendered himself to 
Octavianus and he would pay for his folly in the end. 4 

When the chief men surviving of the Republican cause were 
led before the victorious generals, Antonius, it is alleged, they 
saluted as imperator , but reviled Octavianus. A number of them 
were put to death. 5 A body of nobles had fled to the island of 
Thasos, among them L. Calpurnius Bibulus and M. Valerius 
Messalla. 6 After negotiation they made an honourable capitula¬ 
tion to Antonius, some entering his service. One of the friends of 
Brutus, the faithful Lucilius, remained with Antonius until the 
end. 7 The rest of them, irreconcilable or hopeless, made their 
escape and joined the admirals of the Republic, Murcus and 
Ahenobarbus on the Ionian Sea and Sex. Pompeius in Sicily. 8 

It was a great victory. The Romans had never fought such a 
battle before. 9 The glory of it went to Antonius and abode with 
him for ten years. The Caesarian leaders now had to satisfy the 
demands of their soldiers for land and money. Octavianus was 
to return to Italy to carry out the settlement of the veterans, 
Antonius to regulate the affairs of the East and exact the requisite 
money. About the provinces of the West they made the following 
dispositions, treating Lepidus as negligible. Cisalpine Gaul, they 

1 Velleius 2, 71, 2 f.: these were all (including Drusus) related together. Of 
nobiles there also perished Sex. Quinctilius Varus (Velleius, ib.), and probably 
young P. Lentulus Spinther; and some of the assassins, such as Tillius Ciniber 
and Q. Ligarius, are not heard of again. 

2 As Brutus exclaimed, quoting from a lost tragedy (Dio 47, 49, 2), 

oj rXrjfJioi' dpcTr}, Ady os' dp’ , eyed be ae 

w? epyov jjrTKovv' av b’ dp’ tbovAeves Tvyj)* 

3 Plutarch, Brutus 53. 

4 Plutarch, Brutus 29: Mdpnov b’ * Arrujutor d£iav (fr-qo'c rffs d roc a s' bcborac biKrjr, 
os' cV Bpovroc s' K<xi Kaacriocq kcll Kdrojcn avvapcdfcelcrOac Svrbfjceros rrpocrBrjKiqv 
lavrdv '() Kraft tqj beba ikc kclv pij rvr yrryjdfi \xer t/cttVou, fUKpor varepov tKeirq) 
fiayflrac. 

5 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 13, 2 (M. Kavonius, the loyal Catonian). 

'■ Appian, BC 4, 136, 575. 7 Plutarch, Brutus 50. 

8 Appian, BC 5, 2, 4 ff. Among them were Cicero’s son and the assassins 

Cassius of Parma and Turullius. Cn. Piso, C. Antistius Vetus and L. Sestius also 

survived. 9 Appian, BC 4, 137, 577 f. 



PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 207 

decided, invoking or inventing a proposal of Caesar the Dictator, 
must be a province no longer but removed from political com¬ 
petition by being made a part of Italy. 1 So Antonius promised to 
give up the Cisalpina: he retained Comata, however, and took 
Narbonensis from Lepidus. Lepidus was also despoiled of Spain, 
for the advantage of Oetavianus, most of whose original portion 
was by now in the hands of Pompeius. As for Africa, should 
Lepidus make complaint, he might have that for his share. These 
engagements were duly recorded in writing, a necessary precau¬ 
tion, but no bar to dishonesty or dispute. Antonius now departed 
to the provinces of the East, leaving to his young colleague the 
arduous and unpopular task of carrying out confiscation in Italy. 

A victor, but lacking the glory and confidence of victory, 
Oetavianus returned to Italy. On the way he fell ill again and 
lingered at Brundisium, too weak to proceed. 2 Rumour spoke 
freely of his death. The rejoicing was premature: Senate and 
People steeled themselves to celebrate instead the day of Philippi. 
Ailing, despondent and under evil auspices, Oetavianus took in 
hand the confiscation of Italian property and the settlement of 
the veterans of Philippi, the remnants of twenty-eight legions. 
Of the acts and policy of the dynasts, the share of Caesar's heir 
was arduous, unpopular and all but fatal to himself. No calcula¬ 
tion could have predicted that he would emerge in strength and 
triumph from the varied hazards of this eventful year. 

The eighteen cities of Italy marked down to satisfy the soldiery 
were not slow to make open protest: they suggested that the 
imposition should be spread out and equalized. Then other 
cities in alarm joined the ranks of discontent. Owners of land 
with their families flocked to Rome, suppliant and vocal. 3 The 
urban plebs cheerfully joined in manifestations against the un¬ 
popular tyranny of the Triumvirs. In the Senate Oetavianus 
proposed measures of alleviation and compromise, with little 
effect save to excite the suspicions of the soldiery. Riots broke 
out and his life was in danger. 

Rome and all Italy was in confusion, with murderous street 
battles between soldiers and civilians. 4 Towns and local magnates 
armed in self-protection. The opposition to Oetavianus was 
not merely a revolt of middle-class opinion against the military 
despotism of the Triumvirate or an interested alliance of the 

1 Appian, BC 5, 3, 12, cf. 22, 87; Dio 48, 12, 5. 

2 Dio 48, 3, 1 if. 

3 Appian, J5C 5, 12, 49: eOpr'jisovi^ ovSev pets ahiKrjacu AeyovTes, 'It(iAlu)tcu Se 

ovres aviaraad at yfjs re teal icrrias ola SopiAijTrroL. 4 Dio 48, 9, 4 f. 



208 PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 

men of property against a rapacious proletariat in arms: it 
blended with an older feud and took on the colours of an ancient 
wrong. Political contests at Rome and the civil wars into which 
they degenerated were fought at the expense of Italy. Denied 
justice and liberty, Italy rose against Rome for the last time. It 
was not the fierce peoples of the Apennine as in the Bellum Itali- 
cum , but rather the more prosperous and civilized regions— 
Umbria, Etruria and the Sabine country, which had been loyal 
to Rome then, but had fought for the Marian cause against Sulla. 
Now a new Sulla shattered their strength and broke their spirit. 

From Lcpidus, his triumviral colleague, and from the consul 
P. Servilius, Octavianus got no help, lie was actively hindered 
by the other consul, L. Antonius, who, aided by the faithful and 
imperious Fulvia, the wife of M. Antonius, and his agent Manius, 
sought to exploit the confusion in the interests of his absent 
brother. 1 They played a double game. Before the veterans they 
laid the blame upon Octavianus, insisting that a final decision be 
reserved for Antonius—for the prestige of the victor of Philippi 
was overwhelming. On the other side, they championed liberty 
and the rights of the dispossessed—again not without reference 
to the popular name of M. Antonius and professions of pietas. 2 
Fulvia, if anybody, knew the character of her husband: he neither 
would nor could go back upon his pledges of alliance to 
Octavianus. She must force him—by discrediting, if not by 
destroying, the rival Caesarian leader, and thus win for her 
absent and unsuspecting consort the sole power which he scarcely 
seemed to desire. 

Octavianus, while prosecuting the policy of the Caesarian 
party, was in danger of succumbing to just such an alliance of 
Caesarians and Republicans as he had stirred up against Antonius 
nearly three years earlier. In alarm he sent his confidential agent, 
Caecina of Volatcrrae, and L. Cocceius Nerva, who was a personal 
friend of Antonius, on an urgent mission to Syria . 3 Caecina returned 
without a definite message, but Nerva stayed with Antonius. 

1 It is impossible to discover the ultimate truth of these transactions. The 
propaganda of Octavianus, gross and mendacious, exaggerated the role of Fulvia 
both at the time and later, putting her person and her acts in a hateful light; and 
there was nobody afterwards, from piety or even from perversity, to redeem her 
memory. (For a temperate view of Fulvia, the last survivor of a great political 
family, cf. Munzcr, P-W vn, 283 f.) Further, L. Antonius has been idealized in 
the account of Appian, where he appears as a champion of Libertas against military 
despotism, of the consular power against the Triumvirate ( BC 5, 19, 74; 43, 179 
ff.; 54, 226 ff.). 

1 Dio 48, 5. 4; BMC , R. Rep. 11, 400 ff. 


3 Appian, BC 5, 60, 251. 



PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 209 

As the year advanced the situation grew steadily worse. The 
sentiments of the soldiery veered round to Octavianus—where 
their interests clearly lay. Octavianus, for his part, divorced his 
unwelcome and untouched bride, the daughter of Fulvia. But 
the consul and Fulvia, so far from giving way, alleged instruc¬ 
tions from M. Antonius, and prosecuted Republican propaganda. 
Officers intervened and called a conference. A compromise was 
reached, but the more important articles were never carried out. 
War was in the air. Both sides mustered troops and seized 
temple-treasures. The consul L. Antonius retired to the strong 
place of Pracneste in the neighbourhood of Rome. And now the 
soldiery took a hand—Caesarian veterans from Ancona, old 
soldiers of Antonius, sent a deputation and arranged a meeting of 
the adversaries at Gabii, half-way between Rome and Praeneste. 
It was arrested by mutual distrust and an interchange of missiles. 1 
Manius produced or invented a letter from M. Antonius sanc¬ 
tioning war, if in defence of his dignitas 2 

The consul marched on Rome, easily routing Lepidus. He 
was welcomed by the populace and by the Senate with a sincere 
fervour such as can have attended none of his more recent pre¬ 
decessors when they had liberated Rome from the domination of 
a faction. But L. Antonius did not hold the city for long. He 
advanced northward in the hope of effecting a junction with the 
generals of his brother who held all the Gallic provinces. 

Octavianus, with Agrippa in his company, had retired to 
southern Etruria. His situation was precarious. He had already 
recalled his marshal Salvidienus, who was marching to Spain with 
six legions to take charge of that region. Even if Salvidienus 
returned in time and their combined armies succeeded in dealing 
with L. Antonius, that was the least of his difficulties. He might 
easily be overwhelmed by the Antonian generals, strong in 
prestige and mass of legions. 

But the Antonians were separated by distance and divided in 
counsel. In Gallia Cisalpina stood Pollio with an army of seven 
legions. The decision to abolish this province and unite the 
territory to Italy had not yet, it appears, been carried out, 
perhaps owing to the recalcitrance of Pollio, who had adopted 
an ambiguous and threatening attitude earlier in the year. For a 
time he refused to let Salvidienus pass through the Cisalpina on 

1 Appian, BC 5, 23, 92 ff. According to Dio, Antonius and Fulvia derided the 
soldiers, calling them govXyjv KaXtyarav (48, 12, 3). 

1 Appian, BC 5, 29, 112: TroXefielv lav rt? ainov rrjv a(ltooiv KaOaipfj, 



210 


PHILIPPI AND PERU SI A 

his way to Spain ; J and now he might bar the return of Octavianus’ 
best marshal and last hope. The Triumvir’s own province, all 
Gaul beyond the Alps, was held for him by Calenus and Ventidius 
with a huge force of legions: they, too, had opposed Salvidienus. 2 

But that was not all. The Republican fleets dominated the 
seas, Ahenobarbus in the Adriatic, Murcus now with Sex. 
Pompeius. Pompeius seems to have let slip his opportunity—not 
the only time. A concerted effort of the Antonian and Republican 
forces in Italy and on the seas adjacent would have destroyed 
Octavianus. But there was neither unity of command nor unity 
of purpose among his motley adversaries. Antonius’ generals in 
Italy and the western provinces, lacking instructions, doubted 
the veracity of his brother and his wife. 

Salvidienus made his way back from Spain through the Cis- 
alpina; Pollio and Ventidius followed, slow but menacing, in 
his rear. The war had already broken out in Italy. 3 Etruria, 
Umbria and the Sabine country witnessed a confusion of marches 
and counter-marches, of skirmishes and sieges. C. Furnius sought 
to defend Sentinum for Antonius: Salvidienus captured the town 
and destroyed it utterly. 4 Nursia, remote in the Sabine land, held 
out for freedom under Tisienus Gallus, but was forced to a 
capitulation. 5 These were episodes: L. Antonius was the central 
theme. He sought to break away to the north. Agrippa and 
Salvidienus out-manoeuvred him. Along with the defeated 
generals Furnius, Tisienus and a number of Antonian or Re¬ 
publican partisans, the consul threw himself into the strong city 
of Perusia and prepared to stand a brief siege, expecting prompt 
relief from Pollio and Ventidius. He was quickly undeceived. 
Octavianus at once invested Perusia with an elaborate ring of 
fortifications. Then, marching north-eastw r ards with Agrippa, he 
confronted Pollio and Ventidius, w r ho, undecided and at variance, 
refused battle and retired through the Apennines. 6 Nor did help 
come from the south in time or in adequate strength. Plancus, 
another of Antonius’ men, occupied with establishing veterans 
near Bcneventum, enlisted troops at the bidding of Fulvia, 7 while 
the Republican Ti. Claudius Nero raised the standard of revolu¬ 
tion in Campania. 8 Plancus marched northwards and took up a 
waiting position, as befitted his character, at Spoletium. 

1 Appian, RC 5, 20, 80 f. 2 Dio 48, 10, 1. 

3 It is quite impossible to reconstruct these operations with narrative or with 
map. 4 Appian, RC 5, 30, 116 ; Dio 48, 13, 4 fT. 

s Dio 48, 13, 2; 6. u Appian, RC 5, 33, 130 ff. 

7 Ih. 5, 33* 1 3 1 ; ci - ILS 886. 8 Velleius 2, 75. 



211 


PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 

Still no sign came from the East. In Perusia the consul pro¬ 
fessed that he was fighting in the cause of his brother, and his 
soldiers inscribed the name of Marcus Antonius as their imperator 
upon their sling-bullets; 1 those of the besiegers bore appeals to 
Divus Julius or uncomplimentary addresses to Fulvia and to the 
bald head of L. Antonius. 2 No less outspoken was the propa¬ 
ganda of the principals. Octavianus in verses of ‘Roman frank¬ 
ness’ derided the absent Antonius (not omitting a Cappadocian 
mistress) and insulted his wife Fulvia. 3 Further, he composed 
poems of traditional obscenity about Pollio, who evaded the 
challenge with a pointed sneer at the man of the proscriptions. 4 

As the siege continued and hunger pressed upon the defenders, 
Ventidius and Pollio resolved to attempt a junction with Plancus 
and relieve Perusia. Marching across the Apennines, they were 
arrested by Agrippa and Salvidienus at Fulginiae, less than 
twenty miles from Perusia—their fire-signals could be seen by the 
besieged. Ventidius and Pollio were ready to fight. The caution 
of Plancus was too strong for them. 5 

There was no mutual confidence in the counsels of the Antonian 
generals. The soldierly Ventidius knew that Plancus had called 
him a muleteer and a brigand; and Pollio hated Plancus. But 
there was a more potent factor than the doubts and dissensions 
of the generals—their soldiers had an acute perception of their 
own interests as well as a strong distaste for war: it would be plain 
folly to fight for L. Antonius and the propertied classes of Italy. 

Pollio, Plancus and Ventidius separated and retired, leaving 
Perusia to its fate. After a final and fruitless sortie, L. Antonius 
made a capitulation (late in February?). Octavianus received 
with honour the brother of his colleague and sent him away to be 
his governor in Spain, where he shortly died. 0 The city of Perusia 
was destined for pillage. The soldiery were thwarted by the 
suicide of a prominent citizen, whose ostentatious pyre started a 
general conflagration. 7 Such was the end of Perusia, an ancient 
and opulent city of the Etruscans. 

1 C 1 L xi, 6721*: ‘M. Ant. imp.’ Also indecent abuse of Octavianus, ib. 6721’ 
and 6721 n . 

~ Ib. 6721 - u : *L(eg.) xi | Divom Iuliuni’; ib. 6721 5 (against Fulvia); ib. 
672i 13 : ‘L. Antoni calve peristi | C. Caesarus victoria.’ 

3 Martial (11, 20) praises their ‘Romana simplicitas’, quoting examples that are 
quite convincing. 

4 Macrobius 2, 4, 21 : ‘at ego taceo: non est enim facile in eurn scribere qui 

potest proscribere.’ 5 Appian, BC 5, 35, 139 ff. 

6 Ib. 5, 54, 229. 

7 Velleius 2, 74, 4; Appian, BC 5, 49, 204 ff. 



212 


PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 

The captives were a problem. Many senators and Roman 
knights of distinction had espoused the cause of liberty and the 
protection of their own estates. It may be supposed that the 
escape of the greater number was not actively impeded. The re¬ 
mainder were put to death—among them Ti. Cannutius, the 
tribune who had presented Caesars heir before the people when 
he marched upon Rome for the first time. 1 Death was also the 
penalty exacted of the town council of Perusia, with the excep¬ 
tion, it is said, of one man, an astute person who in Rome had 
secured for himself a seat upon the jury that condemned to death 
the assassins of Caesar. 2 These judicial murders were magnified 
by defamation and credulity into a hecatomb of three hundred 
Roman senators and knights slaughtered in solemn and religious 
ceremony on the Ides of March before an altar dedicated to 
Divus Julius? 

Where Caesar’s heir now stood, Italy learned in horror at 
Perusia and in shame at Nursia. On the monument erected in 
memory of the war the men of Nursia set an inscription which 
proclaimed that their dead had fallen fighting for freedom. 
Octavianus imposed a crushing fine. 4 

The generals of Anton ius dispersed. Along with Fill via, 
Plancus fled to Greece, deserting his army. Ventidius and Pollio 
turned back and made for the coast of the Adriatic. Ventidius’ 
march and movements are obscure. Pollio retired north-eastwards 
and held Venetia for a time against the generals of Octavianus. 
Then all is a blank, save that he negotiated with the Republican 
admiral Ahenobarbus, whose fleet controlled the Adriatic, and 
won his support for Antonius. 5 

The partnership in arms of the young Caesar, his coeval 
Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus their senior had triumphed over 
all hazards. Confronted by their vigour and resolution, the most 
eminent and the most experienced of the partisans of Antonius 
had collapsed, two consulars, the soldier Ventidius and the diplo¬ 
matic Plancus, and one consul—for the illustrious year of Pollio 
had begun. 

Yet Octavianus was in no way at the end of his difficulties. 
He was master of Italy, a land of famine, desolation and despair. 
But Italy was encompassed about with enemies. Antonius was 

' Dio 48, 14, 4; Appian, BC 5, 49, 207. 2 Appian, BC 5, 48, 203. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 15; Dio 48, 14, 4; cf. Seneca, De clem. 1,11 (‘Arae 
Perusinae*). 

4 Dio 48, 13, 6. The incident is wrongly dated by Suetonius, Divus Aug. 12. 

s Velleius 2, 76, 2; Appian, BC 5, 50, 212. 



PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA 213 

approaching with an armament from the East, Antonius’ man 
Calenus still held all Gaul beyond the Alps. On the coasts 
Ahenobarbus threatened Italy from the east, Pompeius from the 
south and west. If this were not enough, all his provinces were 
assailed at once. Pompeius drove out M. Lurius and captured 
Sardinia ; 1 in Hispania Ulterior Octavianus’general Carrinas was 
faced bv the invasion of a Moorish prince whom L. Antonius and 
Fulvia had incited ; 2 in Africa the ex-centurion Fuficius Fango, 
fighting with valour and resource in a confused war against 
T. Sextius, the former governor, who had remained in the pro¬ 
vince, was at last overcome and killed . 3 Caesar’s heir would soon 
be trapped—and crushed at last. That way all odds pointed and 
most men’s hopes. 

In his emergency Octavianus sought aid where he could, an 
accommodation with the master of the sea. He sent Maecenas on 
a diplomatic mission to Sicily and gave pledge of his sentiments by 
taking to wife Scribonia , 4 who was the sister of that Libo whose 
daughter Sex. Pompeius had married. But Pompeius, as was 
soon evident, was already in negotiation with Antonius. 

Once again the young Caesar was saved by the fortune that 
clung to his name. In Gaul Calenus opportunely died. His son, 
lacking experience or confidence, was induced to surrender all 
Gaul and eleven legions . 5 Octavianus left Italy to take over this 
welcome accession : he placed Salvidienus in charge of Gaul, con¬ 
fident in the loyalty of his friend. 

When Octavianus returned towards the end of the summer, it 
was to find that Antonius had come up from the East and was 
laying siege to Brundisium, with Ahenobarbus and Pompeius as 
open and active allies. The affair of Perusia had been sadly mis¬ 
managed. This time the enemies of Octavianus had a leader. 
The final armed reckoning for the heritage of Caesar seemed 
inevitable; for Rome the choice between two masters. Which of 
them had the sympathy of Italy could scarcely be doubted; and, 
despite the loss of the Gallic legions, the odds of war were on the 
side of the great Antonius. 

1 Dio 48, 30, 7. 2 Appian, BC 5, 26, 103. 

1 U>. 5, 26, 102 ; Dio 48, 22, 1 ff. T. Sextius had at last suppressed Q. Cornificius 
and won Africa for the Caesarians, cf. above, p. i8y, n. 5. Fango had been sent 

by Octavianus after Philippi to take over from Sextius. 

4 Appian, BC 5, 53, 222; below, p. 228. 

5 Dm 48, 20, 3; Appian, BC 5, 51, 213 f. 


44 82 


H 



XVI. THE PREDOMINANCE OF 
ANTONIUS 

T HE victor of Philippi proceeded eastwards in splendour to 
re-establish the rule of Rome and extort for the armies yet 
more money from the wealthy cities of Asia, the prey of both 
sides in Rome’s intestine wars. He exacted nine years’ tribute, 
to be paid in two. Antonius distributed fines and privileges over 
the East, rewarded friends and punished enemies, set up petty 
kings or deposed them. 1 So did he spend the winter after 
Philippi. Then his peregrinations brought him to the city of 
Tarsus, in Cilicia. Through his envoy, the versatile Q. Dellius, he 
summoned an important vassal, the Queen of Egypt, to render 
account of her policy. 2 

Cleopatra was alert and seductive. 3 Antonius, fresh from the 
Cappadocian charmer Glaphyra, 4 succumbed with good will but 
did not surrender. The Queen, who was able to demonstrate her 
loyalty to the Caesarian party, received confirmation in her 
possessions and departed. Antonius, making necessary arrange¬ 
ments in Syria and Palestine, passed leisurely onwards to Egypt. 
After a short and merry winter at Alexandria, he left Egypt in 
the early spring of 40 b.c. That he had contracted ties that bound 
him to Cleopatra more closely than to Glaphyra, there neither is, 
nor was, any sign at all. Nor did he see the Queen of Egypt again 
until nearly four years had elapsed. 

On the havoc of intestine strife a foreign enemy had super¬ 
vened. The Parthians, with Roman renegades in their company, 
poured into Syria and reduced the governor, Decidius Saxa, to 
sore straits. Antonius arrived at Tyre. Of trouble in Italy, the 
most disquieting rumours were already current: he soon learned 
that a new and alarming civil war had broken out between his 
own adherents and the Caesarian leader. 5 

The paradox that Antonius went from Syria to Egypt and 
lurked in Egypt, while in Italy his wife and his brother not 

1 Appian, BC 5, 4, 15 ff. 2 Plutarch, Antonius 25. 

3 It will not be necessary to repeat Plutarch’s dramatic and romantic account of 
their confrontation. 

4 Appian, BC 5, 7, 31 ; Martial 11, 20. She was the mistress of the dynast of 
Comana. 

5 Appian, BC 5, 52, 216 



THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIOS 215 

merely championed his cause and won Republican support, but 
even raised civil war with a fair prospect of destroying the rival 
Caesarian leader, might well seem to cry out for an explanation. 
It was easy and to hand—Antonius was besotted by drink, the 
luxury of Alexandria and the proverbial charms of an alien 
queen, 1 or else his complicity in the designs of his brother was 
complete but unavowed. The alternative but not incongruous 
accusations of vice and duplicity perhaps do less than justice to 
the loyal and open character of Antonius, his position as the 
colleague of Octavianus and the slowness of communication by 
sea in the dead of winter. Of the earlier stages of the dissensions 
in Italy, Antonius was well apprised. He could not intervene— 
the confiscations and the allotment of lands to the veterans of 
Philippi were Octavianus* share in a policy for which they were 
jointly responsible. The victor of Philippi could not forswear his 
promises and his soldiers. His own share was the gathering of 
funds in the East—in which perhaps he had not been very 
successful. 2 He felt that he was well out of the tangle. Of sub¬ 
sequent events in Italy, the war in Etruria and the investment 
of Perusia, it may be that he had no cognizance when he arrived 
at Tyre in February of the year 40, but learned only after his 
departure, when sailing to Cyprus and to Athens. 3 The War 
of Perusia was confused and mysterious, even to contemporaries. 4 
All parties had plenty to excuse or disguise after the event; and 
Antonius, if adequately informed, may still have preferred to 
wait upon events. 5 At last he moved. 

The Parthian menace was upon him, but the Parthians could 
wait. Antonius gathered forces and sailed for Greece. At 
Athens he met Fulvia and Plancus. He heard the reproaches 
of the one and the excuses of the other; he learned the full 
measure of the disaster. Whether for revenge or for diplomacy, 
he must be strongly armed: he prepared a fleet and looked 
about for allies. From Sex. Pompeius came envoys, with offer 
of alliance. 6 Failing a general compact and peace that would 

1 Dio 48, 27, I : VTTO T€ TOV epeoros KOLL V7TO TT]S pL€8r]<s . 

1 Cf. E. Groag, Klio xiv (1914), 43 ff. 3 W. W. Tarn, CAM x, 41 f. 

4 There was even a theory that Octavianus and L. Antonius were acting in 
collusion, forcing on a war to facilitate and excuse confiscations (Suetonius, Dwus 
Aug. 15). 

5 So E. Groag, Klio xiv (1914), 43 ff. He argues that Antonius committed a 
serious and irreparable error of political calculation—which is not so certain. 

6 The envoys were L. Scribonius Li bo and Sentius Satuminus (Appian, BC 5, 
52, 217): they brought with them Julia, the mother of Antonius, who had fled to 
Sicily. Ti. Claudius Nero and his wife also came to Greece about this time. 



216 THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

include Pompeius, Antonius agreed to armed co-operation. 
When he set sail in advance with a few ships from a port in 
Epirus, the fleet of Ahenobarbus, superior in strength, was 
descried bearing down upon them. Antonius drove on: Plancus 
was afraid. Ahenobarbus struck his flag and joined Antonius. 1 
He had already been secured by Pollio. 2 

Brundisium, the gate of Italy, refused to admit Antonius. He 
laid siege to the city. Then Sex. Pompeius showed his hand. 
He had already expelled from Sardinia M. Lurius the partisan 
of Octavianus, and he now made descents upon the coasts of 
southern Italy. 

A complete revolution of alliances transformed the visage— 
but not the substance—of Roman politics. Octavianus the 
adventurer, after achieving recognition with Republican help 
against the domination of Antonius, deserted and proscribed his 
associates before a year had passed; again, at Perusia, he stamped 
out the liberties of Rome and Italy in blood and desolation, and 
stood forth as the revolutionary leader, unveiled and implacable. 
Antonius, however, a former public enemy, was now invading 
Italy with what remained of the Republican armed forces. His 
admiral was Ahenobarbus, Cato’s nephew, under sentence of 
death for alleged complicity in the murder of Caesar; his open 
ally was Pompeius, in whose company stood a host of noble 
Romans and respectable knights, the survivors of the proscrip¬ 
tions, of Philippi, of Perusia. 

With this moral support Antonius confronted his Caesarian 
rival. For war, his prospects were better than he could have 
hoped; and he at once demonstrated his old generalship by the 
sudden and complete rout of a body of hostile cavalry. 3 His 
brother had tried to defend the landed class in Italy from the 
soldiery; and Antonius himself had been inactive during the War 
of Perusia. His errors had enabled Octavianus to assert himself 
as the true Caesarian by standing for the interests of the legions. 
But his errors were not fatal—Octavianus had great difficulty in 
inducing the veterans from the colonies to rally and march against 
Antonius; some turned back. 4 Octavianus might command a mass 
of legions: they were famished and unreliable, and he had no ships 
at all. Not merely did Antonius hold the sea and starve Italy. 

1 Appian, BC 5, 55, 230 fF. 

2 Velleius 2, 76, 2. 

' Dio 48, 28, 1; Appian, BC 5, 58, 245. 

4 Appian, BC 5, 53, 220. Appian may, however, be exaggerating the prestige of 
Antonius. 



THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 217 

Salvidienus with the armies of all Gaul was in negotiation and 
ready to desert. If anybody, Salvidienus should have known 
how the odds lay. Once again, however, the Caesarian legions 
bent the Caesarian leaders to their will and saved the lives of 
Roman citizens. They refused to fight. On each side deputations 
of soldiers made their wishes known. 1 Tentative negotiations 
followed. As a sign of goodwill, Antonius sent away Ahenobar- 
bus, a compromising adherent, to be governor of Bithynia, and 
he instructed Pompeius to call off his fleets. Serious conferences 
began. They were conducted for Antonius by Pollio, the most 
honest of men, for Octavianus by the diplomatic Maecenas. 
L. Cocceius Nerva was present, a friend of Antonius but accep¬ 
table to the other party. 2 

Under their auspices a full settlement was reached. 3 The 
Triumvirate was re-established. Italy was to be common ground, 
available for recruiting to both leaders, while Antonius held all 
the provinces beyond the sea, from Macedonia eastwards, Octa¬ 
vianus the West, from Spain to Illyricum. The lower course of 
the river Drin in the north of Albania, the boundary between the 
provinces of Illyricum and Macedonia, formed their frontier by 
land. To the inferior Lepidus the dynasts resigned possession of 
Africa, which for three years had been the theatre of confused 
fighting between generals of dubious party allegiance. The com¬ 
pact was sealed by a matrimonial alliance. Fulvia, the wife of 
Antonius, had recently died in Greece. Antonius took in wedlock 
the sister of his partner, the fair and virtuous Octavia, left a widow 
with an infant son by the opportune death of her husband, 
C. Mareellus, in this year. 

Such was the Pact of Brundisium, the new Caesarian alliance 
formed in September of the year which bore as its title the con¬ 
sulate of Pollio and Calvinus. 4 It might not have happened: the 
armed confrontation of the angry dynasts at Brundisium por¬ 
tended a renewal of warfare, proscriptions and the desolation of 
Italy, with a victor certain to be worse than his defeated adversary 
and destined to follow him before long to destruction, while Rome 
and the Roman People perished, while a world-empire as great as 
that of Alexander, torn asunder by the generals struggling for the 
inheritance, broke up into separate kingdoms and rival dynasties. 

1 Appian, BC 5, 59, 246 fT. 

‘ lb. 5, 64, 272. 

3 Dio 48, 28, 4; Appian, BC 5, 65, 274. 

4 An approximate date is provided by the fact that the magistrates of the colony 
of Casinurn set up a ‘signum concordiae’ on October 12th (ILS 3784). 



218 THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIES 

Was there no end to the strife of citizen against citizen? No 
enemy in Italy, Marsian or Etruscan, no foreign foe had been 
able to destroy Rome. Her own strength and her own sons laid 
her low. 1 The war of class against class, the dominance of riot 
and violence, the dissolution of all obligations human and divine, 
a cumulation of horrors engendered feelings of guilt and despair. 
Men yearned for escape, anywhere, perhaps to some Fortunate 
Isles beyond the western margin of the world, without labour 
and war, but innocent and peaceful. 

The darker the clouds, the more certain was the dawn of 
redemption. On several theories of cosmic economy it was 
firmly believed that one world-epoch was passing, another was 
coming into being. The lore of the Etruscans the calculations 
of astrologers and the speculations of Pythagorean philosophers 
might conspire with some plausibility and discover in the comet 
that appeared after Caesar’s assassination, the Julhim sidus , the 
sign and herald of a new age. 2 Vague aspirations and magical 
science were quickly adopted for purposes of propaganda by the 
rulers of the world. Already coins of the year 43 B.c. bear 
symbols of power, fertility and the Golden Age. 3 

It was in this atmosphere of Messianic hopes, made real by the 
coming of peace and glorious with relief and rejoicing, that the 
poet Virgil composed the most famous and the most enigmatic 
of his pastoral poems. The Fourth Eclogue hails the approach of 
a new era, not merely to begin with the consulate of his patron 
Pollio but very precisely to be inaugurated by Pollio, ‘te duce\ 
The Golden Age is to be fulfilled, or at least inaugurated, by a 
child soon to be born. 

The child appears to be something more than a personification 
of an era in its infancy, its parents likewise are neither celestial 
nor apocalyptic, but a Roman father with virtus to bequeath to 

1 Horace, Epodes 16, 1 f.: altera iam teritur bellis civilibus aetas 

suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit. 

The Epode is quoted and utilized here, though it may very well be several years 
later in date. The problem of priority between the Epode and the Fourth Eclogue 
is difficult. That Virgil’s poem is the earlier is now very plausibly argued by 
B. Snell, Hermes lxxiii (1938), 237 ff. 

2 The last Ludi Saeculares at Rome had been celebrated in 149 B.c. They were 
therefore due to recur in 39 b.c. —at least on one calculation. The Etruscan seer 
Vulcanius announced tine end of the ninth age (Scrvius on Eel. 9, 47) and died 
upon the spot: the incident is there brought into connexion with the comet—and 
said to be referred to in the Autobiography of Augustus. For Pythagorean doctrines, 
cf. J. Carcopino, Virgile et le mystere de la IV e eglogue (1930), 57 ff. 

3 Cf. A. Alfoldi, Hermes lxv (1930), 369. 



THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 219 

his son, and a Roman matron. 1 The identification of the child of 
destiny is a task that has exercised the ingenuity—and revealed 
the credulity or ignorance—of scholars and visionaries for two 
thousand years; it has been aggravated by a hazard to which 
prophetic literature by its very nature is peculiarly liable, that of 
subsequent manipulation when exact fulfilment has been frus¬ 
trated or postponed. 2 

A string of Messianic candidates with spurious credentials 
or none at all may summarily be dismissed. A definite claim 
was early made. Pollio’s son Callus (born perhaps in 41 H.c.) 
informed the leaned Asconius that, as a matter of fact, none 
other than he, Callus, was the wonder-child: 3 no evidence that 
Asconius believed him. The Virgilian commentators in late 
antiquity with confidence instal a younger son of Pollio, Saloninus, 
who duly smiled at birth and conveniently perished almost at 
once. 4 Yet the very existence, not merely the relevance, of 
Saloninus may be called into doubt; 5 * further, there is no reason 
to imagine that Pollio expected a son of his to rule the world, no 
indication in the poem that the consul there invoked was shortly to 
become a father. The sister of Octavianus had a son, Marcellus, 
by her consular husband; but Marcellus was born two years 
earlier. 0 In 40 b.c. Octavianus himself, it is true, had contracted 
a marriage with Scribonia; Julia, his only daughter, was born in 
the following year. 

But there was a more important pact than the despairing and 
impermanent alliance with Pompeius, a more glorious marriage 
than the reluctant nuptials with the morose sister of Pompeius’ 
father-in-law. Brundisium united the Caesarian leaders in con¬ 
cord and established peace for the world. It is a fair surmise that 
the Fourth Eclogue was composed to announce the peace, to 
anticipate the natural and desired consequences of the wedding 
of Antonins and Octavia. 7 Pollio the consul was Antonius’ man, 
and Pollio had had a large share in negotiating the treaty—he 
is an agent here, not merely a date. Antonius’ son, heir to the 

1 Ed. 4, 26 f.: at simul heroum laudes et facta parentis 

iam legere et quae sit poteris cognosccre virtus. 

2 It may have been rehandled and made more allegorical in form. 

’ Servius on Ed. 4, 1. ■* Servius, ib. 

s Cf. R. Syme, (\) xxxi (1937), 39 IT. 

0 Propertius 3, 18, 15; PIR\ C 925. 

7 As persuasively argued by W. W. Tam , JRS xxn (1932), 135 ff. The widely 

prevalent belief that Virgil must have been writing about a child of Octavianus 
derives from anachronistic opinions concerning the historical situation in 40 B.c. 



220 


THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

leadership of the Caesarian party, should in truth have ruled over 
a world that had been pacified bv the valour of his father— 

pacatumque reget patriis virtutihus orhem. 1 

The expected child turned out to be a'girl (the elder Antonia, 
born in 39 B.C.), the compact of the dynasts a mere respite in the 
struggle. That was not to be known. At the end of 40 B.c. the 
domination of the Caesarian faction, founded upon the common 
interests of leaders and soldiers and cemented by the most bind¬ 
ing and personal of pledges, offered a secure hope of concord at 
last. 

The reconciled leaders, escorted by some of their prominent 
adherents, made their way to Rome. Of Antonius’ men, the 
Republican Ahenobarbus had been dispatched to Bithynia to 
facilitate the Caesarian compact. 2 Plancus soon followed as 
governor of the province of Asia;* and immediately upon the 
conclusion of the pact Antonius sent his best general Ventidius 
to disperse the Parthians. 4 Pollio may have departed to Macedo¬ 
nia about the same time—if he came to Rome to assume the 
insignia of his consulate, it was not to wear them for long, for 
a new pair of consuls was installed before the end of the year, 
Balbus the millionaire from Cades, emerging again into open 
history after an absence of four years, and the Antonian P. 
Canidius Crass us. s Their services were diverse and impressive, 
but barely known to historical record. 

Octavianus now learned of the danger that had menaced him. 
In a moment of confidence in their new alliance, Antonius 
revealed the treachery of Salvidienus; who was arraigned for 
high treason before the Senate and condemned to death/’ This 
was the end of Q. Salvidienus Rufus the peer of Agrippa and 
Ventidius, and most remarkable, perhaps, of all the marshals of 
the Revolution. Like Balbus, he had held as yet no senatorial 
office—the wars had hardly left time for that. But Octavianus 
had designated him as consul for the following year. The next 

1 Eil. 4, 17. - Appian, 11(1 5, 63, 269. 

’ As may be inferred from Dio 4<S, 26, 3. 4 Appian, I 1 C 5, 65, 276. 

Dio 48, 32, 1. They had a very brief tenure. 

6 Velleius 2, 76, 4: ‘per quae tempura Ruh Salvidieni scelesta consilia patefacta 
sunt, qui natus obscurissimis initiis parum habebat summa accepisse et proximus 
a Cn. Pompeio ipsoque Caesare equestns ordinis consul creatus esse, nisi in id 
ascendisset, e quo infra se et Caesarem videret et rern publicum/ Cf. Livy, Per. 1 27; 
Dio 48, 33, 3; Suetonius, Jhvus Aug. 66, 2; Appian, 11(1 5, 66, 278 f. Coins bear 
the legend ‘Q. Salvius imp. cos. desig.’ ( Fh\K !, H. Rep. 11, 407 f.) It will not be 
necessary to add that we possess only the ‘official version’ of Salvidienus’ treason. 



221 


THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

two eponymous consuls, C. Calvisius Sabinus and L. Marcius 
Censorinus, were a visible reminder of Caesarian loyalty—alone 
of the senators they had sought to defend Caesar the Dictator 
when he was assailed by the Liberators. 1 2 

In the eyes of contemporaries, Antonius stood forth as the 
senior partner, overshadowing the young Caesar in prestige and 
in popularity. Of Lepidus none took account: he had family 
influence and did not resign ambition, but lacked a party and 
devoted legions. His style of politics was passing out of date. 
Antonius, however, was still the victor of Philippi; military repute 
secured him the larger share of credit for making peace when the 
fortune of war had been manifestly on his side. 

The complacency of the dynasts and the nuptials of Antonius 
were soon clouded by disturbances in the city of Rome. The 
life of Octavianus was endangered. Unpopular taxes, high prices 
and the shortage of food provoked serious riots: Sex. Pompeius 
expelled Hclenus the freedman from Sardinia, which he was 
trying to recapture for Octavianus,- and resumed his blockade 
of the coasts of Italy. The plebs clamoured for bread and peace. 
Following the impeccable precedent set by the soldiers, they 
constrained the Caesarian leaders to open negotiations with 
Pompeius. There was no choice—their rule rested on the people 
and the army. 

After interchange of notes and emissaries, the Triumvirs and 
Pompeius met near Puteoli in the summer of the year 39: they 
argued, bargained, and banqueted on the admiral’s ship, moored 
by the land. A rope cut, and Pompeius would have the masters 
of the world in his power—a topic fertile in anecdote. 

The Peace of Puteoli enlarged the Triumvirate to include a 
fourth partner. Pompeius, possessing the islands, was to receive 
Peloponnesus as w r ell. To recognition was added compensation 
in money and future consulates for himself and for Libo. The 
proscribed and the fugitives were to return. 

To Antonius, now urgently needed in the East, the new com¬ 
pact appeared to bring an ally in the West of much more value 
than Lepidus to check the power of his ambitious rival for the 
leadership of the Caesarian party. The young Caesar, strong in 
the support of the plebs and the veterans, would have to be 

1 Nicolaus, Vita Cacsaris 26, 96. The inscription ILS 925 (Spoletium) attests a 
dedication in honour of the pietas of C. Calvisius Sabinus: clearly, therefore, the 
consul of 39 h.c., and not his son, as commonly held (e.g. PJR‘ l , C 353). 

2 Appian, BC 5, 66, 277. 



222 THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

watched. As far as concerned the senatorial and equestrian 
orders, the primacy of Antonius seemed firm enough—governing 
his provinces were the most prominent and most able members 
of that party, the consulars Pollio, Piancus and Ventidius. Not 
to mention Ahenobarbus, himself the leader of a party. The 
majority of the Republicans were now on the side of Antonius. 
After Philippi, Valerius Messalla, Bibulus and others transferred 
their allegiance to Antonius, who, though a Caesaiian, was one 
of themselves, a soldier and a man of honour. Peace with 
Pompeius brought him further allies. 1 The aristocrats would 
have disdained to associate with the young adventurer who had 
made his way by treachery and who, by the virtue of the name of 
Caesar, won the support of the plcbs in Rome and the armed 
proletariat of Italy, and represented Caesarism and the Revolu¬ 
tion in all that was most brutal and odious. Their, reasoned 
aversion was shared by the middle class and the men of property 
throughout Italy. 

Having the best men of both parties in sympathy or alliance, 
Antonius began with a formidable advantage. It waned with the 
years and absence in the East. Octavianus was able to win over 
more and more of the leading senators, Caesarian, Republican or 
neutral. 2 For the present, however, no indication of such a 
change. Octavianus went to Gaul for a brief visit, Lepidus to 
Africa. Antonius departed for the eastern provinces with his 
young and beautiful bride and spent the winter of 39 in her 
company, enjoying the unwonted pleasures of domesticity and 
the mild recreations of-a university town. Athens was Antonius' 
headquarters for two winters and the greater part of two years 
(39-37). Save for two journeys to the coast of Italy to meet his 
triumviral colleague and one to the bank of the Euphrates, he 
superintended from Athens the reorganization of the East. 

The northern frontiers of Macedonia, ever exposed to the 
raids of tribes from Albania and southern Serbia, had been ne¬ 
glected during the Civil Wars and demanded attention. After 
Philippi, Antonius left L. Marcius Censorinus as proconsul of 
Macedonia; 3 and on the first day of the year 39 Censorinus 
inaugurated his consulship with a triumph. 4 Later in the year 

1 Below, p. 227. 

1 On the provincial governors and partisans of the Triumvirs, cf. L. Ganter, 
Die Proi'inzialverwaltung der Triumvirn (Diss. Strassburg, 1892); A. E. Claiming, 
Die Anhangerschaft des Antonius und des Octavian (Diss. Leipzig, 1936). See further 
below, pp. 234 ff.; 266 ff. 

' Plutarch, Antonius 24. 


4 CJL i 2 , p. 50. 



THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTON 1 US 223 

the next proconsul, Pollio, celebrated the suppression of the 
Parthini, a native people dwelling in the hinterland of Dyrrha- 
chium. 1 The Dardani will also have felt the force of the Roman 
arms—Antonius kept a large garrison in the Balkans, perhaps 
seven legions. 2 The western frontier of his dominions was the 
sea. He maintained a large fleet here, protecting the coast from 
Albania down to Peloponnesus. One of its stations was the island 
of Zacynthus, held by his admiral C. Sosius. 3 

But the Balkan peninsula was in no way the chief preoccupa¬ 
tion of Antonius. Eastwards the E'mpire was in chaos. The War 
of Perusia encouraged the Parthians to invade Syria and prevented 
Antonius from intervening. Led by Pacorus, the King’s son, and by 
the renegade Roman, Q. Labienus, who styled himself ‘Parthicus 
imperator’, 4 the horsemen swept over Syria, killing Decidius Saxa 
the governor; then they overran southern Asia as far as the coast 
of Caria in the west, in the south all the lands from Syria down to 
Jerusalem. Most of the client kings were disloyal or incompetent. 
Plancus the proconsul fled for refuge to an Aegean island, 5 and the 
defence of Asia was left to Roman partisans in the Greek cities or 
to opportunist brigands. At Jerusalem Pacorus set up a king, 
Antigonus, of a cadet branch of the royal house. The damage and 
the disgrace were immense. But the domination of the nomads 
was transient. Brundisium freed the energies of Rome. 

Antonius at once dispatched Ventidius against the enemy. 
With Ventidius went as his legate or quaestor the Marsian 
Poppaedius Silo. 0 Ventidius had served under Caesar, and he 
moved with Caesarian decision and rapidity. In three great 
battles, at the Cilician Gates, at Mount Amanus (39 B.c.) and at 
Gindarus (38 b.c.) he shattered and dispersed the Parthians. 
Both Pacorus and Labienus perished. Then, after Gindarus, he 
marched to Samosata on the Euphrates and laid siege to that 

1 CIL i 2 , p. 50; Dio 48,41, 7. Both Dio and the Acta Triumphalia mention the 
Parthini, and only the Parthini, a tribe whose habitat is known. A capture of the 
city of Salonae far away in Dalmatia, alleged by the Virgilian scholiasts, is merely 
an inference from the name of Pollio’s short-lived and dubious infant, Saloninus. 
Pollio’s province was clearly Macedonia, not Illyricum, which lay in the portion 
of Octavianus, cf. CQ xxxi (1937), 39 ff- 

2 W. W. Tarn, CQ xxvi (i93 2 )> 75 ff- Appian (BC 5, 75, 320) mentions the 
Dardani, but there is no record of any operations against them. The history of 
Macedonia in the years 38-32 B.c. is a complete blank. 

1 Coins of Sosius, ranging in date from his quaestorship (40 or 39) to his con¬ 
sulate (32), were struck at Zacynthus, BMC y R. Rep. n, 500; 504; 508; 524. Not 
that Sosius was there all the time—he governed Syria for Antonius in 38-36. 

4 Dio 48, 26, 5; Strabo, p. 660; BMC , R. Rep . 11, 500. 

5 Dio 48, 26, 3 (wrongly dated). 6 lb. 48, 41, 1; Josephus, AJ 14, 393 ff. 



224 THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

place. There was delay—and allegations that Vcntidius had 
taken bribes from the prince of Commagene. Antonius arrived 
and received in person the capitulation of Samosata. Vcntidius 
departed, and in November the Picene, who had been led a 
captive by Pompeius Strabo fifty-one years before, celebrated 
in Rome his paradoxical triumph. 1 

Ventidius is not heard of again save for the ultimate honour of 
a public funeral. 2 Sosius took his place as governor of Syria], 
and, accompanied by Herod, proceeded to pacify Judaea. After 
a tenacious siege Jerusalem surrendered (July, 37 B.c.). 

The authority of Rome had been restored. It remained to 
settle the affairs of the East upon an enduring basis and make 
war, for revenge, for prestige and for security, against the* 
Parthians. After Samosata, Antonius left legions in the north; 
and in 37 B.c. his marshal Canidius pacified Armenia and em¬ 
barked on campaigns towards the Caucasus. 4 in the disposal of 
the vassal kingdoms certain arrangements had already been made 
by Antonius. During the course of the following year they were 
modified and completed. It will be convenient to mention later 
in one place the territories and kingdoms according to the ordina¬ 
tion of Antonius. s 

The predominance of Antonius was secured and reinforced; 
but the execution of his policy was already being hampered 
by the claims and acts of his young colleague, who, as in his 
revolutionary debut, had everything to gain by stirring up 
trouble. Octavianus soon found it advisable or necessary to 
make war upon Sex. Pompeius. He invited Antonius to come to 
Italy for a conference in the spring of the year 38. Antonius 
arrived at Brundisium, but not finding his colleague there, and 
being refused admittance to the town, he departed at once, 
alleging pressure of Parthian affairs: by letter he warned Octa¬ 
vianus not to break the peace with Pompeius. Octavianus, persist¬ 
ing, incurred ruinous disaster (38 b.c.) and had to beg the help of 
Antonius, sending Maecenas on a mission to Greece. Antonius, 
who wished to have his hands free of western entanglements 
and needed Italian legionaries for his own campaigns, agreed to 
meet his colleague. 

1 CIL 1", p. 50, cf. 180. The fullest account of the exploits of Ventidius is given 
by Dio, 48, 39, 3 ff.; 49, 19, 1 ff. According to Fronto (p. 123 n), Sallust com¬ 
posed an encomium for Ventidius to deliver. 

2 Gellius 15, 4, 4. 3 Dio 49, 22, 3 f., &c. 

4 lb. 49, 24, 1 ; Plutarch, Antonius 34; Strabo, p. 501. 

s Below, p. 260. 



THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 225 

The winter passed, and in the spring of 37 Antonius sailed with 
a large fleet from Athens to Italy. Once again he found that 
Brundisium would not admit him. Not that he had either the 
desire or the pretext for war, but he was in an angry mood. Once 
again for the benefit of an ambiguous partner he had to defer the 
complete pacification of the East. Caesar’s heir journeyed to the 
encounter, taking a varied company that included Maecenas and 
L. Cocceius Nerva (still perhaps a neutral), the negotiator of 
Brundisium, also the Antonian C. Fonteius Capito and a troupe of 
rising poets. 1 Pollio was not present. If invited, he refused, 
from disgust of politics. 

Resentful and suspicious, the dynasts met at Tarentum. Both 
the patience of Antonius and the diplomacy of Maecenas were 
exhausted. At last the mediation of Octavia was invoked to 
secure an accommodation between her brother and her husband 
—or so at least it was alleged, in order to represent Antonius in 
an aggressive mood and in an invidious light. 2 The powers of the 
Triumvirs asxonferred by the Lex Titia had already run out with 
the close of the previous year. Nobody had bothered about that. 
The Triumvirate was now prolonged for another five years until 
the end of 33 b.c. 3 By then, it was presumed, the State would 
have been set in order and the organs of government repaired— 
or the position of the Caesarian leaders so far consolidated that 
they could dispense with the dictatorial and invidious powers 
of the Triumvirate. The consuls for 32, designated long in ad¬ 
vance, were adherents of Antonius, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus 
and C. Sosius. But five years is a long period in a revolutionary 
epoch. Octavianus felt that time was on his side. For the present, 
his colleague was constrained to support the war against Pom- 
peius. From his fleet Antonius resigned one hundred and 
twenty ships against the promise of twenty thousand legionary 
soldiers. He never received them. 

Antonius departed. Before long the conviction grew upon 
him that he had been thwarted and deceived. He may have 
hoped that his military genius as well as his ships would be 

1 Horace, Sat. 1, 5, 31 ff. The poets were Virgil, Horace and L. Varius Rufus. 
Virgil’s friend Plotius Tucca was with them—and a certain Murena, presumably 
the brother-in-law of Maecenas, of later notoriety. 

2 The accounts in Dio 48, 54, 1 f. and Plutarch, Antonius 35, are clearly hostile 
to Antonius, deriving from the Autobiography , cf. F. Blumenthal, Wiener Studien 
xxxvi (1914), 84 f., or at least influenced by court tradition, which embellishes the 
role of Octavia, cf. M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capoparte n, 71. 

’ On which question, cf. Rice Holmes, The Architect of the Roman Empire I, 
231 ff.; M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capoparte 11, 71 f. 



226 THE PREDOMINANCE OF ANTONIUS 

enlisted to deal with Pompeius. But Octavianus would have 
none of that. Further, from duty to his ally and to the Caesarian 
party, Antonius had lost the better part of two years, sacrificing 
ambition, interest and power. Of an appeal to arms, no thought 
in his mind—the chance to suppress Caesar’s heir had been 
offered repeatedly three years before, by fortune, by Fulvia and 
by Salvidienus. Antonius had rejected those offers. 

As yet, however, neither his predominance nor his prestige 
were gravely menaced and there was work to be done in the 
East. Antonius departed for Syria. From Corcyra in the late 
summer of the year he sent Octavia back to Italy. He may 
already have tired of Octavia. Anything that reminded him of 
her brother must have been highly distasteful. His future and 
his fate lay in the East, with another woman. But that was not 
yet apparent, least of all to Antonius. 



XVII. THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 


AT Brundisium Caesar’s heir had again been saved from 
jLx. ruin by the name, the fortune and the veterans of Caesar, 
the diplomacy of his friends and his own cool resolution. Not to ' 
mention chance and the incompetence of his enemies, the acci¬ 
dental death of Fufius Calenus and the fatal error of Salvidienus. 
The compact with Antonius gave standing, security and the 
possession of the western provinces. He at once dispatched to 
Gaul and Spain the ablest among his partisans, the trusty and 
plebeian Agrippa, now of praetorian standing, and the aristocrat 
Domitius Calvinus, fresh from his second consulate, with long 
experience of warfare and little success as a general. 

The Pact of Puteoli brought Italy a respite at last from raids and 
famine, and to Octavianus an accidental but delayed advantage— 
prominent Republicans now returned to Rome, nobles of ancient 
family or municipal aristocrats. Here were allies to be courted, 
men of some consequence now or later. 1 There were others: yet 
there was no rapid or unanimous adhesion to the new master of 
Rome. While some reverted again to Pompeius, many took service 
under Antonius and remained with him until they recognized, 
to their own salvation, the better cause—‘meliora et utiliora’. 2 

Many senators and knights, being peaceful members of the 
propertied classes, wearied by exile and discomfort, left the com¬ 
pany of Pompeius without reluctance; and few Republicans could 
preserve, if they had ever acquired, sufficient faith in the principles 
of any of the Pompeii, into whose fatal alliance they had been 
driven or duped. Ahenobarbus kept away from Sex. Pompeius, 
who gave guarantee neither of victory nor even of personal se¬ 
curity—he had recently put to death on the charge of conspiracy a 
Republican admiral, Staius Murcus. 3 

Defeated at Pharsalus but not destroyed, the family and faction 
ot the Pompeii had incurred heavy losses through desperate 
valour at Thapsus and Munda; and princes or local dynasts in 
foreign lands had lapsed by now to the Caesarian party. Sextus’ 
brother was dead, as were those faithful Picenes, Afranius and 

1 Velleius (2, 77, 3) mentions Ti. Claudius Nero, M. Junius Silanus, L. Arrun- 
tius, M. Titius and C. Sentius Saturninus. The list is partial in every sense of 
the term. Nero had already left Pompeius for Antonius (Suetonius, Tib . 4, 3). 

1 Official phraseology, cf. Velleius 2, 84, 3. 3 Velleius 2, 77, 4. 



228 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

Labienus. Yet Pompeius still retained in his following persons 
of distinction, relatives, friends or adherents of his family. 1 
Scaurus his step-brother was with him, and Libo his wife’s 
father. 2 Likewise an odd Republican or two and certain of the 
assassins, for whom there could be no pardon from Caesar’s 
heir, no return to Rome. But the young Pompeius was despotic 
and dynastic in his management of affairs, like his father trusting 
much to alien or domestic adherents. Whether from choice or 
from necessity, he came to rely more and more upon the services 
of his Greek freedmen; in the subsequent campaigns in Sicily 
only two Romans held high command on his side: TisienusGallus, 
the refugee from Sabine and Republican Nursia, and a certain 
L. Plinius Rufus. 3 

To the defeated of Philippi and Perusia it had seemed for a 
time that the young Pompeius might be a champion of the 
Republican cause. But it was only a name that the son had 
inherited, and the fame of Pompeius Magnus belonged to an 
earlier age. Piet as was not enough. Greek freedmen were his 
counsellors, his agents and his admirals, while freed slaves manned 
his ships and filled his motley legions. Pompeius might sweep the 
seas, glorying in the favour and name of Neptune; 4 the Roman 
plebs might riot in his honour it was only from hatred of 
Caesar’s heir. In reality an adventurer, Pompeius could easily 
be represented as a pirate. 5 

Peace was not kept for long upon the Italian seas. Before the 
year was out mutual accusations of bad faith were confirmed or 
justified by overt breaches of the agreement. Marriage and 
divorce were the public tokens of political pacts or feuds. 

1 Appian (BC 5, 139, 579) names as his last companions in Asia (35 b.c.) Cassius 
of Parma, Nasidius, Saturninus, Thermus, Antistius, Fannius and Eibo. These 
persons can mostly he identified. There is only one difficulty, whether Saturninus 
is the Sentius Saturninus Vetulo, one of the proscribed, who, along with Libo con¬ 
ducted Julia, the mother of Antonius, to Greece in 40 B.c., or his son, C. Sentius 
Saturninus (cos. 19 B.c.), a better-known person (who is clearly referred to by 
Velleius, 2, 77, 3). The Sentii were related to Libo (ILS 8892). 

2 M. Acmilius Scaurus w as the son of Mucia, Pompeius’ third wife, by her second 
husband. Sex. Pompeius had married a daughter of L. Scribonius Libo c. 55 B.c. 

* Tisienus Gallus, Dio 49, 8, 1 ff.; Appian, BC 5, 104, 432, &c. L. Plinius Rufus, 
Appian, BC 5, 97, 405, &c.; ILS 889T. Perhaps add Cn. Cornelius Lcntulus ( CIL 
XI, 6058) and Q. Nasidius, the Pompeian admiral and son of a Pompeian admiral 
(BMC, R. Rep . 11, 564 f.). 

4 Horace, Epodes 9, 7 f.: ‘Neptunius dux’; Dio 48, 31, 5 and 48, 5; Appian, BC 
5, 100, 416; BMC, R. Rep. ii, 564 f. (coins of his admiral Q. Nasidius, honouring 
at the same time Pompeius Magnus and the god of the sea). 

5 Res Gestae 25: ‘mare pacavi a praedonibus’; cf. Horace, Epodes 4, 19: ‘contra 
latrones atque servilem manum.’ 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 229 

Octavianus abruptly divorced Scribonia, his senior by many years 
and a tiresome character. 1 He then contracted with unseemly 
haste an alliance that satisfied head, heart and senses, and endured 
unimpaired to the day of his death. For once in his life he 
surrendered to emotion: it was with political advantage. He fell 
in love with Livia Drusilla, a young matron generously endowed 
with beauty, sagacity and influential connexions. Herself in the 
direct line of the Claudii (her father, slain at Philippi, was a 
Claudius adopted in infancy by the tribune Livius Drusus), 2 
she married a kinsman, Ti. Claudius Nero, who had fought ior 
Caesar against Pompeius, for L. Antonius and the Republic in 
the War of Perusia. With her husband and the child Tiberius, 
Livia fled from the armed bands of Octavianus to take refuge with 
Sex. Pompeius. 3 Livia was about to give birth to another son— 
no obstacle, however, in high politics. The college of pontijices 
when consulted gave a politic response, and the husband showed 
himself complaisant. The marriage was celebrated at once, to 
the enrichment of public scandal (Jan. 17th, 38 n.c.) 4 . 

The grandson of a small-town banker had joined the Julii by 
adoption and insinuated himself into the clan of the Claudii by 
a marriage. His party now began to attract ambitious aristocrats, 
among the earliest of whom may fairly be reckoned a Claudian 
of the other branch, Ap. Claudius Pulcher, one of the consuls of 
the year. 5 

One of the suffect consuls was L. Marcius Philippus, who had 
probably followed the discreet and ambiguous policy recommen¬ 
ded by the examples of a father and a grandfather, not hastening 
to declare himself too openly for his step-brother Octavianus: 
his father, through diplomacy, hoped to get him an early con¬ 
sulate/’ His ambition was now satisfied, his allegiance beyond 
question. Whether the discarded Scribonia took another husband 
has not been recorded. 7 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 62, 2: ‘cum hac quoque divortium fecit, pertaesus, ut 
scribit, morum perversitatem eius.’ 2 P-\V xm, 881 ff. 

3 Velleius 2, 75; Suetonius, Tib. 4. 

4 The Calendar of Vcrulae gives the date ( L'ann. ep. y 1923, 25). On th difficulty 
of harmonizing the literary evidence about the date of Drusus’ birth, cf. E. Groag. 
PIR\ C 857. 

s A nephew of Ap. Claudius Pulcher, cos. 54. 6 Ad Jam. 12, 2, 2. 

7 The problem of Scribonia’s husbands, intensified by Suetonius when he de¬ 
scribes her as ‘nuptam ante duobus consularibus’ ( Divus Aug. 62, 2), appears 
insoluble, cf. recently E. Groag, P 1 R 2 , C 1395. Her first husband was Cn. Lentulus 
Marcellinus {cos. 56B.C.). The second is a problem. Her daughter Cornelia, married 
to Paullus Aemilius Eepidus (cos. 34 b.c.), had Scipionic blood (Propertius 4, 
IJ > 29 f.), but cannot be the issue of a marriage contracted as late as 38 B.c. A 



2 3 o THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

Octavianus now had a war on his hands—earlier perhaps than 
he had planned. His best men, Agrippa and Calvinus, were 
absent. Lepidus in Africa was silent or ambiguous. Ambition 
had made him a Caesarian, but he numbered friends and kins¬ 
men among the Republicans. Lacking authority with the armies 
and a provincial clientela like that of Pompeius or the Caesarian 
leaders, he might still exert the traditional policy of family 
alliances, though the day was long past when that alone brought 
power at Rome. His brother-in-law the consular P. Servilius 
carried little weight—if still alive. 1 Lepidus, married to a half- 
sister of Brutus, was connected with certain eminent Republicans 
now in the alliance of Antonius, above all Ahenobarbus; 2 and his 
own son was betrothed to a daughter of Antonius. Again, 
Republicans in the company of Sex. Pompeius might be able to 
influence Antonius or Lepidus: they had done so before. For 
Octavianus there subsisted the danger of a revived Republican 
coalition under Antonius, Lepidus and Pompeius, banded to 
check or to subvert him. Hence the need to destroy Pompeius 
without delay. For the moment Antonius was loyal to the 
Caesarian alliance; but Antonius, who came to Brundisium but 
departed again without a conference, gave him no help. Anto¬ 
nius disapproved, and Sex. Pompeius for his part believed that 
Antonius would not support his colleague. 

The young man went on with his war, encouraged by an initial 
advantage—one of the most trusted of the freedmen of Pompeius 
had surrendered the island of Sardinia, a war-fleet and an army 
of three legions. Octavianus—or his admirals L. Cornificius and 
C. Calvisius Sabinus—devised a plan for invading Sicily. The 
result was disastrous. Pompeius attacked Octavianus as his ships, 
coming from Tarentum, were passing through the Straits of 
Messana to join his other fleet from the Bay of Naples. Pompeius 
won an easy victory . In the night a tempest arose and shattered 
the remnant of the Caesarian fleet. Pompeius rendered thanks to 
his protecting deity: in Rome the mob rioted against Octavianus 
and the war. 

P. Scipio became consul suffect in 35 b.c. : perhaps he had been previously married 
to Scribonia, before 40 B.c. 

1 Lepidus’ son Marcus married Scrvilia, the daughter of P. Servilius (Velleius 2, 
88 , 4, cf. Miinzer, RA y 370). Perhaps in 36 b.c. : pretty certainly the Scrvilia once 
betrothed to Octavianus. 

2 Lepidus had several children. Their destiny, save for the eldest son, is un¬ 
known. They were surely employed at an early age for dynastic alliances. It is not 
known whom Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus married; but his grand-daughter, child of 
L. Domitius and Antonia, bears the name of Domitia Lepida. 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 231 

Caesar’s heir was damaged and discredited. The military glory 
of Antonius was revived in the triumph which his partisan Venti- 
dius now celebrated over the Parthians. Agrippa, returning from 
Gaul with useful achievements to his credit and the consulate 
for the next year as his reward, did not choose to hold the 
triumph that would have thrown the disasters of Octavianus into 
high and startling relief. 1 The young Caesar was now in sore 
need both of the generalship of Agrippa and the diplomacy of 
Maecenas. Lacking either of them he might have been lost. 
Antonius was induced to come to Tarentum in the spring of the 
following year (37). The uneasy alliance was then perpetuated. 
Antonius lent fleets and admirals—L. Calpurnius Bibulus, M. 
Oppius Capito, and L. Sempronius Atratinus;- and Lepidus was 
conciliated or cajoled, perhaps through Antonius. 

Octavianus now had the ships. lie needed crews and a har¬ 
bour. Twenty thousand freed slaves were pressed into service, 
and Agrippa proceeded to construct a great harbour at the 
Lucrine Lake beside Puteoli in the Bay of Naples. The year 
37 passed in thorough preparations. There was to be no mistake 
this time. Agrippa devised a grandiose plan for attacking 
Sicily from three directions in the summer of 36: Octavianus was 
to sail from Puteoli, Statilius Taurus from Tarentum, while 
Lepidus invaded Sicily from the south with the army of Africa, 
fourteen legions strong. Operations began on July 1st. The 
fighting was varied and confused. Agrippa won a victory at 
Mylae but Octavianus himself was defeated in a great battle in 
the straits, escaping with difficulty and in despair to the main¬ 
land. 3 Cornificius rescued the remnants of the fleet. Hope soon 
revived. His generals, and Lepidus as well, had secured a firm 
footing in the island. They soon overran the greater part. 
Pompeius was forced to risk all on the chance of another sea- 
fight. Superior numbers and the tactics of Agrippa decided the 
battle of Naulochus (September 3rd). 

Pompeius made his escape and, trusting to the fame of his 
father in the eastern lands, raised a private army of three legions 
in Asia, with which force he contended for a time against the 

1 Dio 48, 49, 4. 

2 For Bibulus, Appian, BC 4, 38, 162 ; 5, 132, 549; and coins, BMC , R. Rep . 11, 
510 ff.; for coins of Oppius, ib. 11, 517 ff. The presence of Atratinus in western 
waters is likewise to be inferred from his coins, some struck in Sicily {BMC, 
R. Rep. ii, 515 f.; Greek Coins , Sicily, 61 ; 05). 

3 His misfortunes gave Antonius sufficient matter for ridicule (quoted in 
Suetonius, Divus Aug. 16). 



232 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

generals of Antonius. Gradually and relentlessly they hunted 
him down, Furnius, Titius and the Galatian prince Amyntas. 
Pompeius refused an accommodation; then his friends and 
associates, even his father-in-law Libo, deserted the brigand’s 
cause and made peace with Antonius, some entering his service. 1 
At last Titius captured Pompeius and put him to death, either 
on his own initiative or at the instigation of his uncle Plancus, 
the governor of Syria. 2 The Roman People never forgave the 
brutal and thankless Titius, whose life had been saved by Pom¬ 
peius several years earlier. 3 

The young Caesar had conquered the island of Sicily. Chance 
delivered into his hands a richer prey. A strange delusion now 
urged Lepidus to assert himself. Plinius Rufus, a lieutenant of 
Pompeius, pent up with eight legions in Messana, offered to 
surrender. Lepidus, overriding Agrippa, who was present, ac¬ 
cepted the capitulation in his own person. Octavianus objected: 
Lepidus, with twenty-two legions at his back, ordered Octavianus 
to depart from Sicily. But Octavianus had not acquired and 
practised the arts of the military demagogue for nothing. He 
entered the camp of Lepidus, with the name of Caesar as his 
sole protection: it was enough. 4 The soldiers had no opinion of 
Lepidus—and this was Caesar’s heir, in audacious deed as well 
as in name. Once again the voice of armed men was heard, 
clamorous for peace, and once again the plea of averting Roman 
bloodshed recoiled upon Lepidus. His digtiitas forfeit, Lepidus 
begged publicly for mercy. 5 6 Stripped of triumviral powers but 
retaining the title of pontifex maximus , Lepidus was banished to 
Circeii, in which mild resort he survived the loss of honour by 
twenty-four years. 

The ruin of Lepidus had no doubt been carefully contrived, 
with little risk to its author but a fine show of splendid courage. 0 
It was easier to deal with generals than with soldiers. In Sicily 

1 Appian, BC 5, 139, 579. Libo became cos. ord. in 34. 

2 lb. 5, 144, 598 ft. 

3 Dio 48, 30, 5 ff. When Titius celebrated games in the theatre of Pompeius 
Magnus, the spectators in indignation rose up and drove him out (Velleius 2, 79, 5). 

4 Velleius 2, 80, 3: ‘praeter nomen nihil trahens.’ 

s lb. 80, 4: ‘spoliata, quam tueri non potcrat, dignitas.’ Velleius, calling Lepi¬ 
dus ‘vir omnium vanissimus’, echoes the language and sentiments of Lepidus’ 
contemporaries. 

6 Appian indicates that the soldiers had carefully been worked upon (BC 5, 
124, 513), and Dio (49, 1 2, 1) is cynical about the whole transaction —vofilaas Si 
8rj irdura to. St/caia napd re ia vnp /cat napd rots unAois, are /cat la^vporcpo^ avrov 
djv, 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 233 

now stood some forty legions diverse in history and origin but 
united by their appetite for bounties and lands. Octavianus was 
generous but firm. 1 The veterans of Mutina and Philippi he 
now released from service, allotting lands and founding colonies 
—more on provincial than Italian soil. That was politic and 
perhaps necessary. 

Of the legionaries of Pompeius a great number, being servile 
in origin, lacked any right or status: they were handed over 
to their former masters or, failing such, impaled. Certain of the 
adherents of Pompeius, senatorial or equestrian in rank, were 
put to death. 2 After which stern measures Octavianus, sending 
Taurus to occupy Africa, returned to Rome, victorious. 

When he arrived there awaited him a welcome, sincere as 
never before. Many no doubt in all classes regretted the son of 
Pompeius the Great and refused to pardon the man of the 
proscriptions. During the campaign in Sicily the presence of 
Maecenas had been urgently required at Rome; 3 and there had 
been disturbances in Etruria. 4 The cessation of war, the freedom 
of the seas and the liberation of Rome from famine placated the 
urban plebs that had rioted so often against the Triumvirs. 
Their iron rule in Italy, while it crushed liberty, had at least 
maintained a semblance of peace in the four years that had 
elapsed since the Pact of Brundisium. Of government according 
to the spirit and profession of the Roman constitution there could 
be no rational hope any more. There was ordered government, 
and that was enough. 

Private gratitude had already hailed the young Caesar with the 
name or epithet of divinity. 5 His statue was now placed in temples 
by loyal or obedient Italian municipalities. 6 At Rome the homage 
due to a military leader and guarantor of peace was enhanced by 
official act and religious sanction. Caesar’s heir was granted 
sacrosanctity such as tribunes of the plebs enjoyed. 7 He had 
already usurped the practice of putting a military title before his 
own name, calling himself Tmperator Caesar'. 8 

The Senate and People—for these bodies might suitably be 
convoked for ceremonial purposes or governmental proclama¬ 
tions—also decreed that a golden statue should be set up in the 
Forum with an inscription to announce that, after prolonged 

1 Dio 49, 13 ; Appian, BC 5, 128, 528 ff. 2 Dio 49, 12, 4. 

1 Appian, BC 5, 112, 470. 4 Dio 49, 15, 1. 

5 Virgil, Eel. 1,6: ‘deus nobis haec otia fecit.’ 

*’ Appian, BC 5, 132, 546: /cat avrov at TroAeiy rot? a<j>€T€pot s* Oeo or avvl&pvov. 

7 Dio 49> I 5» 5 E 8 Above, p. 113. 



234 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

disturbances, order had been restored by land and sea. 1 The 
formulation, though not extravagant, was perhaps a little pre¬ 
mature. But it contained a programme. Octavianus remitted 
debts and taxes; and he gave public expression to the hope that 
the Free State would soon be re-established. 2 It only remained 
for his triumviral partner to perform his share and subdue the 
Parthians, when there would be no excuse for delay to restore 
constitutional government. Few senators can have believed in the 
sincerity of such professions. That did not matter. Octavianus 
was already exploring the propaganda and the sentiments that 
might serve him later against Antonius, winning for personal 
domination the name and pretext of liberty. 

The young military leader awoke to a new confidence in him¬ 
self. Of his victories the more considerable part, it is true, had 
been the work of his lieutenants. His health was frail, scanty 
indeed his military skill. But craft and diplomacy, high courage 
and a sense of destiny had triumphed over incalculable odds. He 
had loyal and unscrupulous friends like Agrippa and Maecenas, 
a nucleus of support already from certain families of the ancient 
aristocracy and a steadily growing party in Rome and throughout 
the whole of Italy. 

How desperate had been his plight at the time of the War of 
Perusia has already been described. He was saved in war and 
diplomacy by his daring and by the services of three friends. 
Agrippa held the praetorship in that year, but Maecenas and 
Salvidienus were not even senators. Again, at Brundisium his 
position was critical. Caesar’s heir had the army and the plebs, 
reinforced in devotion, but had attached few senators of note, 
even when four years had elapsed since the foundation of the 
faction and the first revolutionary venture. Consulars were rare 
enough on either side. The most prominent of them, Pollio, 
Ventidius and Plancus, were with Antonius. Octavianus had two 
and two only, the military men C. Carrinas and Cn. Domitius 
Calvinus. Carrinas, of a family proscribed by Sulla, but admitted 
to honours by Caesar, commanded armies for the Dictator, and 
was the first triumviral consul. 3 The noble Calvinus is a solitary 
and mysterious figure. It was from his house that Caesar set 
forth on the Ides of March; 4 and Caesar had destined him to be 

1 Appian, BC 5, 130, 541 f. 

2 lb. 5, 132, 548. 

3 Above, pp. 90 and 188. For Octavianus he fought in Spain in 41 b.c. (Appian, 
BC 4, 83, 351) and in the Bellum Siculum (ib. 5, 112, 469). 

4 Val. Max. 8, n, 2. 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 235 

his deputy in the Dictatorship, magister equitum A After that, no 
word or hint of this eminent consular until his attempt to bring 
legions across the Ionian Sea for the campaign of Philippi. Then 
silence again until he becomes consul for the second time in 40 B.c., 
with no record of his activity, and governor of all Spain for 
Octavianus the year after. 

No other nobilis can be found holding military command under 
Caesar’s heir in the four years before Brundisium, unless Nor- 
banus, the grandson of the proscribed Marian consul, be accorded 
this rank: Norbanus was the general who along with Saxa opened 
the operations against the Liberators in Macedonia. Nor are 
senators’ sons at all frequent in the revolutionary faction. The 
Peducaei were a modest and reputable senatorial family, on terms 
of friendship with Cicero, Atticus and Balbus. 1 2 One of them, C. 
Peducaeus, fell at Mutina for the Republic—or for Octavianus. 3 
Sex. Peducaeus, who had served under Caesar in the Civil 
Wars, was one of Octavianus’ legates in the Spanish provinces 
after Perusia; 4 and T. Peducaeus, otherwise unknown, became 
suffect consul in 35 b.c. 5 

For the rest, his earliest marshals, in so far as definitely 
attested, were the first members of their families to acquire 
senatorial rank. The admirable D. Carfulenus, one of the casual¬ 
ties of Mutina, and the cx-centurion C. Fuficius Fango, killed 
while fighting to hold Africa for Octavianus, were among the 
Dictator's new senators. The younger Balbus was probably in 
Spain at the same time as Peducaeus; 6 and the obscure admiral 
M. Lurius, never heard of before and only once again, held a 
command in Sardinia. 7 To this ill-consorted and undistinguished 
crew may perhaps be added P. Alfenus Varus (cos. suff. 39 B.c.), 
also a new name. 8 

1 OIL i 2 , p. 42. 2 Miinzer, P-W xix, 45 ff. * Ad Jam . 10, 33, 4. 

4 Appian, BC 5, 54, 229 f., cf. Miinzer, P-W xix, 46 f. and 51. This man was 

present, along with Agrippa and Balbus, at the death-bed of Atticus in 32 B.c. 

(Nepos, Vita Attici 21, 4). 

5 As shown by the new Fasti, L'anti. ep ., 1937, 62. 

6 Appian, BC 5, 54, 22$, cf. Groag, PIN 2 , C 1331. If or when he was consul is 
uncertain, for Velleius describes him as ‘ex privato consularis’ (2, 51, 3). Two 
persons of the name of L. Cornelius held suffect consulates in this period, in 38 
and in 32: the former eludes certain identification, the latter is probably L. Corne¬ 
lius Cinna. Of Balbus himself, nothing is recorded between 40 and 19 b.c. 

7 Dio 48, 30, 7. He was later an admiral at Actium (Velleius 2, 85, 2). 

8 Forphyrio on Horace, Sat. 1, 3, 130, says that he came from Cremona. Virgil 
dedicated to him the sixth of his Eclogues : hence, in the Virgilian Lives and in the 
scholiast^, the allegation that he was a land-commissioner. The political affiliations 
of this mysterious character are not unequivocally recorded. 



236 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

But now, after Brundisium, the soldiers of fortune Salvidienus 
and Fango were dead: the young leader was short of partisans. 
The compact with Antonius, his presence in Italy, the advanta¬ 
geous alliance and the regular control of patronage improved his 
prospects. Another four years, from the Pact of Brundisium to 
his triumph in the Sicilian War, and the new party has acquired 
distinction as well as solidity. The process of conciliating the 
neutrals, of seducing Republicans and Antonians (the two terms 
were sometimes synonymous) has already advanced a stage; and 
his following already reveals in clear outline the twin and yet 
contrasting pillars of subsequent strength—new men of ability 
and ambition paired with aristocrats of the most ancient families. 

Many minor partisans served him well, of brief notoriety and 
quick reward, then lapsing into obscurity again. Some names are 
known, but are only names, accidentally preserved, such as the 
admiral M. Mindius Marccllus from his own town of Vclitrae: 1 
to say nothing of aliens and freedmen, of which support Pompeius 
had no monopoly, but all the odium. 2 (\ Proculeius, however, now 
turns up, only a Roman knight, but a person of repute and conse¬ 
quence. 3 Above all, the full narrative of the Sicilian campaigns 
reveals on the side of Caesar’s heir for the first time among his 
generals or active associates seven men who had held or were 
very soon to hold the consulate, all men of distinction or moment, 
inherited or acquired. 4 

C. Calvisius Sabinus (cos. 39 b.c.), one of Caesar’s officers and a 
senator before the assassination, was a loyal Caesarian, at first a 
partisan of Antonius. 5 L. Cornificius (cos. 35) was the astute 
careerist who undertook to prosecute the absent Brutus under 

1 Appian, BC 5, 102, 422; SEC} vi, 102 L'ann. cp., 1925, 93 (Velitrae). 
Also Titinius and Carisius (Appian, BC 5,111,463). Titinius is unknown. Carisius 
is probably P. Carisius, of later notoriety as legate of Augustus in Spain (Dio 53, 
25, 8): an interesting and rare name of non-Latin termination. Rebilus (Appian, 
BC 5, 101,422) may be the son of C. Caninius Rebilus, cos. suff. 45 B.c. 

~ On freedmen in command, above p. 201. Selcucus the admiral from Rhosus 
in Syria, revealed only by inscriptions (Syria xv (1934), 33 ff.), may have been sent 
by Antonius to help his ally— and may have passed before long into the service of 
Octavianus, cf. M. A. Levi, Riv. difil. lxvi (1938), 113 ff. 

3 Pliny, A1 l 7, 138. Proculeius was the half-brother of Murena, to whose sister 
Tcrentia Maecenas was married (Dio 54, 3, 5). Other persons later prominent, 
such as the great novi homines M. Lolhus (cos. 21 b.c.), L. Tarius Rufus (cos. suff. 
16 b.c.) and P. Sulpicius Quirinius (cos. 12 B.c), were perhaps making their debut 
in Octavianus’ service about this time. 

4 The names derive, unless otherwise stated, from the detailed narratives of Dio 
and Appian. 

5 Calvisius was an Antonian in 44 b.c. (Phil. 3, 26). There is no evidence how 
soon he joined Octavianus. On his origin, cf. above, p. 199 and p. 221. 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 237 

the Lex Pedia} Of the family of Q. Laronius (cos. stiff. 33)—and 
indeed of his subsequent history—nothing at all is known. 1 2 
Destined ere long to a place in war and administration second 
only to Agrippa was T. Statilius Taurus (cos. stiff. 37); he owed 
his advancement to the patronage of Calvisius, like himself of 
non-Latin stock. 3 The name of Statilius recalled, and his family 
may have continued, an ancient line of the aristocracy of Lucania. 4 * 
These were able or unscrupulous military men, the first of new 
families to attain the consulate. Beside them stand three descen¬ 
dants of patrician houses, Ap. Claudius Pulcher (cos. 38), Paullus 
Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 34) and M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus 
(cos. 31). The gifted and eloquent Messalla, ‘fulgentissimus 
iuvenis’, fought for liberty at Philippi and was proud of it. He 
then followed Antonins for a time, it is uncertain for how longA 
The young Lepidus went with Caesar’s heir from hatred of his 
triumviral uncle (who had proscribed his father) —or from a 
motive of family insurance not uncommon in the civil wars, when 
piety or protection might triumph over political principle, saving 
lives and property. 6 The earlier activities of both Lepidus and 
Ap. Pulcher are obscure—probably tortuous. 7 

The principal members of the Caesarian faction won glory and 
solid recompense. I n public and official semblance, the campaigns 
in Sicily were advertised not as a civil but a foreign war, soon to 
become a glorious part of Roman history. In the Bellum Siculum 
no Metelli, Scipiones or Mareelli had revived their family laurels 
and the memory of victories over a Punic enemy by sea and 

1 Plutarch, Brutus 27. Nothing is known of his family or attachments: there is 
no evidence that he was related to Q. Cornificius. 

4 Apart from the narrative of the Sicilian War and the fact of his consulate, 
the only clear testimony about Q. Laronius is a tile from Vibo in llruttium (CIL x, 
8041 IR ), which was presumably his home, cf. ILS 6463. 

1 In whose company he is first mentioned, in 43, perhaps as one of his legates 
{AdJam. 12, 25, j : ‘Minotauri, id est Calvisi et Tauri’): after that, nothing till his 
consulate and service as an admiral. Presumably one of Caesar’s new senators. 

4 Note Statius Statilius in 282 B.c. (Val. Max. 1, 8, f>) and Marius Statilius in 
21b (Livy 22, 42, 4 IT.), commanders of Lucanian troops. A dedication to Taurus 
comes from Volceii in Lucania (ILS 893a). 

s Messalla may have come with ships from Antonius as did Bibulus and Atrati- 
nus. He is not attested with Octavianus before 36 b.c. The reason given for his 
change of allegiance was naturally disapproval of Antonius’ conduct w ith Cleopatra 
(Appian, BC 4, 38, 161; Pliny, Nil 33, 50). The wife of Octavianus’ kinsman 
Q. Pedius (cos. suff. 43) belonged to the family of Messalla (ib. 35, 21). 

f ’ Lepidus was not an admiral: but he was in the company of Octavianus in 
3b H.r. (Suetonius, Divus Aug. 16, 3). 

7 Pulcher was an Antonian in 43 B.c., but willing to be recommended to D. 
Brutus (Ad fenn. 11, 22). 



238 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

land. But Cornificius received or usurped the privilege of an 
elephant for his conveyance when he returned home from ban¬ 
quets, a token of changed times and offensive parody of Duillius, 
the author of Romes earliest naval triumph. 1 For Agrippa, the 
greatest of the admirals, was devised an excessive honour, a 
golden crown to be worn on the occasion of triumphs. 2 Other 
admirals or generals received and retained the appellation of 
imperator? Cornificius held the consulate at the beginning of 
35 B.c.; the upstart Laronius and the noble Messalla had to wait 
for some years—not many. 

High priesthoods were conferred as patronage. Before long the 
marshal Calvisius engrossed two of the more decorative of such 
offices: Taurus followed his unholy example. 4 Most of the colleges 
had already been crammed full with the partisans of the Triumvirs. 
No matter—Messalla was created an augur extraordinary. 5 Octa- 
vianus enriched his friends by granting war-booty or private 
subsidy in lavish measure; 6 and the contraction of marriage- 
alliances with birth or wealth was a sign and pledge of political 
success. Paullus Aemilius Lepidus married a Cornelia, as was 
fitting, of the stock of the Scipiones. 7 For the nevi homines splen¬ 
did matches were now in prospect. By chance, no record is pre¬ 
served of the partners of Taurus, Calvisius, Cornificius and 
Laronius. Agrippa had already married an heiress, Caecilia, the 
daughter of Atticus.* 

Of the associates of Octavianus so far as now revealed to his¬ 
tory, Messalla, Ap. Fulcher and Lepidus were not merely noble 
but of the most ancient nobility, the patrician; which did not in 
any way hamper them from following a revolutionary leader or 
taking up an ally not of their own class, from ambition or for 
survival in a dangerous age. The young revolutionary was be¬ 
coming attractive and even respectable—or rather, he already 

1 Dio 49, 7, 6. 

2 lb., 14 3; Velleius 2, 8 t, 2; Virgil, Acn. 8, 684. 

' Salvidicnus had been imperator before becoming a senator {BMC, R. Rep. 11, 
407). Q. Laronius is ‘imp. 11’, even on a tile (C/E x, 804i ,H ). 

4 Calvisius was septemvir epulonum and curio maximus (JLS 925), in which latter 
function he was probably succeeded by Taurus, who was also augur {ILS 893a). 
Taurus held ‘complura sacerdotia’ (Velleius 2, 127, 1). 

5 Dio 49, 16, 1. 

6 Hence Agrippa’s estates in Sicily (Horace, Epp. 1, 12). 

7 The daughter of Scribonia, above, p. 229. Fulcher’s wife is not known, but 
there is a link somewhere with the Valerii, cf. PIR 2 , C 982. On Messalla, below, 
p. 423. 

8 The marriage was contracted with the active approval of M. Antonius, probably 
in 37 B.c. (Ncpos, Vita Attici 12, 2). 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 239 

gave signs of becoming equal if not superior in power to Antonius. 
These aristocratic careerists, like the dynastic Livia Drusilla, the 
greatest of them all, were to be amply remunerated for their 
daring and their foresight. 

As yet they were conspicuous by their rarity. The van¬ 
quished of Philippi and of Perusia were more amicably disposed 
to Antonius; and his Republican following, already considerable, 
was augmented when the last adherents of Sex. Pompeius passed 
into his service. None the less, the young Caesar was acquiring 
a considerable faction among the aristocracy. The nobiles would 
attract others of their own rank and many a humbler snob or 
time-server as well: the prospect of a consulate in ten or twenty 
years, if the system endured, invited young men of talent or 
desperate ambition. As admission to the Senate and other forms 
of patronage rested in the hands of the Triumvirs, Octavianus, 
by his presence at Rome, was in a position of distinct advantage 
over the distant Antonius. He easily found in the years that 
followed the men to govern the military provinces of Gaul, 
Spain and Africa. 1 A powerful Caesarian oligarchy grew up, 
while the party of Antonius, by contrast, became more and more 
Pompeian. 

That was not the only advantage now resting with Octavianus. 
He had cleared the sea of pirates, eliminated Lepidus and satis¬ 
fied the veterans without harming Italy. But the seizure of Sicily 
and Africa disturbed the balance of power and disconcerted 
Antonius. Three dynasts had held the world in an uneasy 
equilibrium. With only two remaining the alternatives seemed 
to be fast friendship or open war. Of the former, the chances 
grew daily less as Octavianus emancipated himself from the 
tutelage of Antonius; and Octavia had given Antonius no son to 
inherit his leadership of the Caesarian party and monarchy over 
all the world. Of the Caesarian leaders, neither could brook an 
equal. Should Antonius come again to Brundisium or Tarentum 
with the fleets and armies of the East, whether it was peace or 
war in the end, Octavianus could face him, as never yet, with 
equal power and arms, in full confidence. 

The young man became formidable. As a demagogue he had 
nothing to learn: as a military leader he needed to show the 
soldiery that he was the peer of the great Antonius in courage, 

1 In the years 36-32 Africa was governed by Taurus and Comificius in succes¬ 
sion, Spain by Norbanus, Philippus and Ap. Pulcher, as the Acta Triumphalia 
show (CIL i 2 , p. 50 and p. 77). About Gaul, no information. 



2 4 o THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

vigour and resource. To this end he devoted his energies in the 
years 35 and 34 b.c. Antonius might tight the wars of the Repub¬ 
lic or of private ambition —far away in the East; Octavianus chose 
to safeguard Italy. The victories of Antonius paled with distance 
or might be artfully depreciated; his own achievements would 
be visible and tangible. 

It was on the north-east that Italy was most vulnerable, over 
the low pass of the Julian Alps: and the eastern frontier of the 
Empire between the Alps and Macedonia was narrow, perilous and 
inadequate. Encouraged by Rome’s enforced neglect in nearly 
twenty years of civil dissensions, the tribes of the mountainous 
hinterland extended their depredations and ravaged northern 
Italy, Istria and the coast of Dalmatia with impunity. 'The 
inheritance of Empire demanded the conquest of all Illyricum 
and the Balkans up to the Danube and the winning of the route 
by land from northern Italy by way of Belgrade to Salonika or 
Byzantium: such was the principal and the most arduous of the 
achievements in foreign policy of the long Principate of Augus¬ 
tus. But Octavianus’ time was short, his aims were restricted. 
In the first campaign he conquered Pannonian tribes and seized 
the strong post of Siscia, an advanced buttress for the defence of 
Italy; in the second he pacified the coast of Dalmatia and sub¬ 
dued the native tribes up to the line of the Dinaric Alps, but not 
beyond it. If war came, he would secure Italy in the north-east 
from an invasion from the Balkans up the valley of the Save and 
across the Julian Alps; and an enemy would win no support 
along or near the coast of Dalmatia. These dangers had been 
threatened or experienced in Caesar’s war against Pompeius 
Magnus. By Octavianus’ foresight and strategy the double object 
was triumphantly achieved. 1 

Not only this. A general secure of the loyalty and the affection 
of his troops does not need to show his person in the front of 
battle. Octavianus in the campaigns in Illyricum risked his 
person with ostentation and received honourable wounds. Anto- 
nius must not be allowed to presume upon his Caesarian qualities 
or retain the monopoly of martial valour. 

This was the young Caesar that Italy and the army knew after 
the campaigns of 35 and 34 B.c. His was the glory. The work 
and services of Agrippa and of Taurus in Illyricum were not pub- 

1 It has sometimes been argued that Octavianus in these years made vast con¬ 
quests in Illyricum, including the whole of Bosnia: which is neither proved nor 
probable. 



THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 241 

licly commemorated. 1 At the end of 33 b.c. the Triumvirate 
(as it may still be called despite the disappearance of Lepidus) 
was due to lapse. 'Then the trial would come. 

After the termination of the Sicilian and maritime war the 
military exploits in Illyricum enhanced the prestige of the young 
Caesar, winning him adherents from every class and every party. 
He redoubled his efforts, and Rome witnessed a contest of display 
and advertisement that heralded an armed struggle. It had begun 
some six years before. 2 

At first Octavianus was outshone. Antonius’ men celebrated 
triumphs in Rome—Censorinus and Pollio from the province of 
Macedonia (39), Ventidius over the Parthians (38). Then in 36 
the balance inclined with the Sicilian triumph, and Octavianus 
pressed the advantage in the next few years with cheap and 
frequent honours for his proconsuls from Spain and Africa. 
Tradition consecrated the expenditure of war-booty for the 
benefit of the populace and the adornment of the city. Pollio 
repaired the Atrium Libertatis and equipped it with the first 
public library known at Rome —for to Libertas Pollio ever paid 
homage, and literature meant more to him than war and politics; 
Sosius (who triumphed in 34) constructed a temple to Apollo; 
Ahenobarbus the admiral built or repaired a shrine of Neptune, 
as was right, even though he did not hold a triumph. 

Apollo, however, w r as the protecting deity of the young Caesar, 
and to Apollo on the Palatine he had already dedicated a temple 
in 36 b.c. In the same year Cm Domitius Calvinus, victorious 
from Spain, rebuilt the Regia; and not long after, Taurus, return¬ 
ing from Africa and triumphing (34), began to construct a theatre, 
Paullus Aemilius to complete the Basilica Aemilia, left unfinished 
by his father; and L. Marcius Philippus after his Spanish triumph 
(33) repaired a temple of Hercules. 

These were some, but not all, of the edifices that already fore¬ 
shadowed the magnificence of Rome under the monarchy. More 
artful than Antonius, the young Caesar built not only for splen¬ 
dour and for the gods. He invoked public utility. His minister 

1 The presence of Agrippa is attested by Appian, 111 . 20; Dio 49, 38, 3 f. Mcssalla 
was also there ( Panegyricus Messallae 108 ff.); and Taurus, corning from his African 
triumph (June 30th, 34 b.c.) to Illyricum, took charge of affairs when Octavianus 
departed (Dio 49, 38, 4). 

2 The precise dates of the various triumphs are provided by the Acta Triumpha - 
lia ( C 1 L ri, p. 50 and p. 77). For the buildings of the viri triumphales, the most 
important texts are Suetonius, Divus Aug. 29, 5; Tacitus, Arm. 3, 72. The compli¬ 
cated evidence is digested and discussed by F. W. Shipley, Mem. Am. Ac. Rome 

(1931), 7 ff. 



242 THE RISE OF OCTAVIANUS 

Agrippa had already begun the repair of a great aqueduct, the 
Aqua Marcia. Now in 33 B.c., though of consular standing, he 
assumed the onerous duties of aedile, and carried out a vast 
programme of public works, restoring all conduits and drains, 
and building a new aqueduct, the Aqua Julia . 1 

Meanwhile, the party grew steadily in strength. In 33 b.c. 
Octavianus became consul for the second time, and his influence, 
not total but at least preponderating, may perhaps be detected in * 
the composition of the consular list of that year, of unprecedented 
length: it contains seven other names. Hitherto he had promoted 
in the main his marshals^with a few patricians, his new allies 
from the families of the Claudii, the Aemilii and the Scipiones. 
In this year the admiral Q. Laronius became consul; the other six 
were commended by no known military service to the Triumvirs. 
Nor did they achieve great fame afterwards, either the nobiles or 
the novi homines . 1 Octavianus may now have honoured men of 
discreet repute among the Roman aristocracy, or persons of in¬ 
fluence in the towns of Italy: in both he advertised and extended 
his power. L. Vinicius was one of the new consuls: he had not 
been heard of for nearly twenty years. Complete darkness also 
envelops the career and the allegiance of M. Herennius, from the 
region of Picenum, and of C. Memrnius, consuls in the previous 
year. 3 

To distribute consulates and triumphs as patronage to sena¬ 
tors, to embellish the city of Rome and to provide the inhabitants 
with pure water or cheap food—that was not enough. The ser¬ 
vices of Agrippa, the soldier and engineer, were solid and visible: 
the other minister Maecenas had been working more quietly and 
to set purpose. It was his task to guide opinion gently into 
acceptance of the monarchy, to prepare not merely for the contest 
that was imminent but for the peace that was to follow victory 
in the last of all the civil wars. 

1 Dio 49, 42, 3 ; 43, 1 ff. Frontinus, Dc aq. 9; Pliny, Nil 36, 121. 

2 L. Volcacius Tullus ( pr . 46 b.c.) and M. Acilius were the sons of consuls of 
the previous generation, L. Autronius Paetus presumably of the unsuccessful 
candidate for 65 b.c. The Antonian, or ex-Antonian, C. Fonteius Capito came 
of a highly reputable praetorian family, L. Vinicius (tribune in 51 B.c.) of equestrian 
stock from Gales. L. Flavius was an Antonian (Dio 49, 44, 3). None of these men 
ever commanded armies, so far as is known, save Autronius and M. Acilius (Glabrio), 
later proconsuls of Africa, in 28 and 25 b.c. respectively, PIR 2 , A 1680; 71. 

3 On the family of Herennius, cf. above, p. 92. Memrnius may be the son of C. 
Memmius(/>r. 58 b.c.) and of Fausta, Sulla’sdaughter(Milowashersecond husband). 



XVIII. ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

I T was ten years from the proscriptions, ten years of Trium- 
viral despotism. Despite repeated disturbances, the lapse of 
time permitted the Revolution (for such it may with propriety 
be called) to acquire permanence and stability. The beneficiaries 
of that violent process, dominant in every order of society, were 
in no way disposed to shaie their new privileges or welcome 
intruders. In a Senate of a thousand members a preponderance 
of Caesarians owed status and office, if not wealth as well, to the 
Triumvirs; and a mass of Roman knights, by their incorporation 
in that order, reinforced the bond between the higher classes of 
the holders of property. Veterans by grant, and freedmen by 
purchase, had acquired estates, sometimes with improvement of 
social standing, actual or in prospect: after the Sicilian War 
Octavianus accorded to his centurions on discharge the rank of 
town-councillors in their municipia . 1 Hence certain symptoms of 
consolidation, political and social. There were to be no more 
proscriptions, no more expulsions of Italian gentry and farmers. 
Many of the exiles had returned, and some through influence or 
protection got restitution of property. But the government had 
many enemies, the victims of confiscation, rancorous and impo¬ 
tent at the moment, but a danger for the near future, should the 
Republicans and Pompeians come back from the East, should 
Antoni us demand lands for the veterans of his legions, should 
the dynasts, fulfilling a solemn pledge, restore the Republic 
after the end of all the wars. Though a formidable body of 
interests was massed in defence of the new order, it lacked inner 
cohesion and community of sentiment. 

The Senate presented a strange and alarming aspect. In the 
forefront, in the post of traditional leadership of the State, stood 
an array of consulars, impressive in number but not in dignity, 
recent creations almost all. By the end of the year 33 b.c. they 
numbered over thirty, a total without precedent. New men far 
outweighed the nobiles . 2 Some families of the aristocracy had 

1 Dio 49, 14, 3; Appian, BC 5, 128, 531. 

2 About consulates under the Triumvirate (43-33 B.c.), the following brief 
confutation can be made. Excluding the Triumvirs, and iterations, there were 
thirty-eight consuls. Of these, three are difficult to classify (C. Norbanus Flaccus 
and L. Cornelius, cos. and cos. suff. 38, and Marcius, cos. suff . 36). Ten only are 



244 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

perished during the last twenty years, others, especially the 
Pompeians and Republicans, could show no member of consular 
age or standing. The patricians were sparse enough at the best 
of seasons: Octavianus created new families of that order, for 
patronage but with a good pretext. 1 

Among the consulars could be discerned one Claudius only, 
one Aemilius, partisans of Octavianus; no Fabii at all, of the 
patrician Cornelii two at the most, perhaps only one; 2 no Valerii 
yet, but the Valerii were soon to provide three consuls in four 
years. 3 No less conspicuous were the gaps in the ranks of the 
dynastic houses of the old plebeian aristocracy- among the prin- 
cipes not a single Metellus, Mareellus, Licinius, Junius or Calpur- 
nius. Those families were not extinct, but many years would 
have to pass before the Fasti of the consuls and the front ranks of 
the Senate regained even the semblance of their traditional 
distinction. 

New r and alien names were prominent in their place, Etruscan 
or Umbrian, Picene or Lucanian. 4 Rome had known her novi 
homines for three centuries now, admitted in the main for personal 
distinction and service in war. ‘Ex virtute nobilitas coepit.’ 5 Then 
Rome’s w r ars against foreign enemies had augmented the aristo¬ 
cracy with a new nobility. No record stands of the sentiments of 
the nobiles when they contemplated the golden crown worn by a 
man called Vipsanius, or the elephant of Cornificius. It would 
have been vain to point in extenuation to their valour in w r ar, to 
urge that many of the upstarts derived their origin from ancient 
families among the aristocracies of the kindred peoples of Italy. 
As for the consular Balbus, that was beyond words. 

The lower ranks of the revolutionary Senate were in harmony 
with the higher, not disdaining freedmen’s sons and retired 
centurions. Magistracies, coveted only for the bare distinction, 
were granted in abundance, held for a few days or in absence. 
The sovran assembly retained only a formal and decorative 

sons or descendants of consular families. There remain twenty-five men, the 
earliest consuls of their respective families (not all, of course, sons of Roman knights : 
there were a number of sons of highly respectable houses of praetorian rank). 

1 Dio 49, 43, 6. 

2 P. Cornelius Scipio, cos. suff. 35, and perhaps L. Cornelius, cos. suff. 38. 

1 Not only Messalla himself, consul with Octavianus for the year 31, hut two 
Valerii, suffect consuls in 32 and 29 respectively. For uncertainties about date and 
identity, PIR\ V 94 and 96: the new Fasti show Potitus Valerius consul in 29. 
M. Valerius, cos. suff. 32, clearly belongs to the same family. 

* Above, p. 199 f. 5 Sallust, BJf 85, 17. 

6 Dio 48, 43, 1 f., cf. above, p. 196. 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 245 

existence, for the transactions of high policy were conducted by 
the rulers in secret or at a distance from Rome. 

Contemporaries were pained and afflicted by moral and by 
social degradation. True merit was not the path to success— 
and success itself was unsafe as well as dishonourable. 1 New 
men emerging established claims to the consulate by brutality or 
by craft. 2 The marshals might disappear, some as suddenly as 
they had arisen, but the practice of diplomacy engendered in its 
adepts the talent of survival, with arts and devices of subservience 
loathed by the Roman aristocracy: no honest man would care to 
surrender honour and independence by becoming a minister to 
despotism. 3 

The pursuit of oratory, interrupted by civil war, languished 
and declined under the peace of the Triumvirs, with no use left 
in Senate or Forum, but only of service to overcome the recalci¬ 
trance of armed men or allay the suspicions of political negotia¬ 
tors in secret conclave. Few indeed of the consuls under the 
Triumvirate even professed or pretended any attachment to 
eloquence; and such of them as deserved any distinction for 
peaceful studies earned no honour on that account from a mili¬ 
tary despotism. Among the earliest consuls, Plancus and Pollio 
made their way as commanders of armies and as diplomats. 4 

In a free state the study of law and oratory might confer the 
highest rewards. The practice of public speaking at Rome had 
recently been carried to perfection when Hortensius, the master 
of the florid Asianic style, yielded the primacy to the more 
restrained but ample and harmonious style of Cicero, recognized 
as ultimate and classical even in his own day. But not without 
rivals: a different conception and fashion of speech was suppor¬ 
ted and defended by reputable champions, vigorous and intense 
yet avoiding ornament and refined harmonies of rhythm, in 
reaction from Hortensius and from Cicero alike. The young 
men of promise, C. Licinius Calvus, who stood in the forefront 
of political speakers, and the spirited Caelius, were by no means 
the only exponents of this Attic tendency in Roman oratory—at 

1 Sallust, BJ 3,1: ‘neque virtuti honos datur neque illi, quibus per fraudem is 
fuit, tuti aut eo magis honcsti sunt/ 

2 lb. 4, 7: ‘etiarn homines novi, qui antea per virtutem soliti erant nobilitatem 
ante venire, furtim et per latrocinia potius quam bonis artibus ad imperia ct honores 
mtuntur.’ 

’ lb. 3, 4: ‘nisi forte quem inhonesta et perniciosa lubido tenet potentiae 
paucorum decus atque libertatem gratiftcari.’ 

4 And although P. Alfenus Varus {cos. stiff. 39) possessed or was to acquire fame 
a c ; a jurist (Gellius 7, 5, 1), that was not the reason of his promotion. 

4482 j 



246 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

the best all bone and nerve, but liable to be dry, tenuous and 
tedious. 1 Caesar’s style befitted the man; and it was generally 
conceded that Brutus’ choice of the plain and open manner was no 
affectation but the honest expression of his sentiments. 2 Neither 
Brutus nor Calvus found Cicero firm and masculine enough for 
their taste. 3 

Of those great exemplars none had survived; and they left few 
enough to inherit or propagate their fame. Pomp and harmomy 
of language, artful variations of argument and ample develop-^ 
ment of theme would scarcely have retained their hold upon a 
generation that had lost leisure and illusions and took no pains to 
conceal their departure. But a direct, not to say hard and truculent 
manner of speech would be well matched with the temper of a 
military age. Some at least of the merits of the plain style, which 
could claim to be traditional and Roman, might be prized and 
preserved until threatened by a complete change of taste, by a 
reversion to Asianism, or by the rise of a new romanticism. Pollio, 
after his triumph abandoning public life, returned to the habits 
of a youth formed in the circle of Calvus and Catullus, and in 
speeches and poetry reproduced some of their Republican vigour 
and independence, little of their grace. His style was dry and 
harsh, carrying avoidance of rhythm to the extremity of abrupt¬ 
ness and so archaic that one would have fancied him born a 
century earlier. 4 Pollio and Messalla were reckoned the greatest 
orators of the new age. Messalla, his rival, displayed a cultivated 
harmony and a gentle elegance well suited to a period of political 
calm. The signs of the melancholy future of eloquence were 
plainly to be read. Oratory would degenerate into the private 
practice of rhetoric: in public, the official panegyric. Freedom of 
speech could never return. 

Freedom, justice and honesty, banished utterly from the 
public honours and transactions of the State, took refuge in the 
pursuits and relationships of private life. The revulsion from 
politics, marked enough in the generation that had survived the 
wars of Marius and Sulla, now gained depth, strength and justi¬ 
fication. Men turned to the care of property and family, to the 
studies of literature and philosophy. From the official religion 
of the Roman People could come scant consolation in evil days, 

1 In the Dialogus of TacitU9 (25, 3, cf. 17, 1), Calvus, Caelius, Brutus, Caesar and 
Pollio are accorded the rank of ‘classical’ orators next to and below, but comparable 

to Cicero. 2 Tacitus, Dial. 25, 6. 

3 lb. 18, 5. 4 Quintilian 10, 1, 113. 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 247 

for that system of ritual, act and formula, necessary in the 
beginning for the success of agricultural and military operations, 
had been carefully maintained by the aristocracy to intimidate 
the people, to assert their own domination and to reinforce the 
fabric of the Commonwealth. Only philosophy could provide 
either a rational explanation of the nature of things or any com¬ 
fort in adversity. Stoicism was a manly, aristocratic and active 
creed; but the doctrines of Epicurus were available, extolling 
abstention from politics and the cultivation of private virtue; and 
some brand or other of Pythagorean belief might suitably com¬ 
mend itself to mystical inclinations. 

How far Atticus and Balbus, who still lived on without public 
signs of their existence, were susceptible to such an appeal might 
well be doubted. The aged Varro, the most learned of the 
Romans, the parent of knowledge and propagator of many errors, 
though not averse from an interest in Pythagoreanism, or in 
any other belief and practice, was sustained by an insatiable 
curiosity, a tireless industry. Long ago he deserted politics, save 
for a brief interval of loyal service to Pompeius in Spain, and 
devoted his energies to scholarship, taking as his subject all 
antiquities, human and divine. 1 Caesar had invoked his help for 
the creation of public libraries. 2 Escaping from proscription, 
though his own stores of learned books were plundered, the 
indefatigable scholar was not deterred. At the age of eighty, 
discovering, as he said, that it was time to gather his baggage for 
the last journey, 3 he proceeded to compose a monumental work 
on the theory and practice of agriculture, of which matter, as a 
landowner with comfortably situated friends and relatives, he 
possessed ample knowledge. 

Though the varied compilations of Varro embraced historical 
as well as antiquarian works, he had gathered the materials of 
history rather than written any annals of note or permanence. 
The old scholar lacked style, intensity, a guiding idea. The 
task fell to another man from the Sabine country, diverse in 
character, attainments and allegiance, C. Sallustius Crispus. 
From the despotism of the Triumvirate Sallustius turned aside 
with disgust. 4 Ambition had spurred his youth to imprudent 

1 His greatest work, the Antiquitates rerum hutnanarum et divinarum , in forty-one 
books, appears to have been composed in the years 55-47 b.c. It was dedicated to 
Caesar. 2 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 44, 2. 

3 RR 1, 1, 1: ‘annus octogesimus admonet me ut sarcinas colligam antequam 
proficiscar e vita.’ This gives as the date 38 or 37 b.c. Varro lived on for ten 
years more (Jerome, Chron ., p. 164 h). 4 Sallust, BJ 4. 



248 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

political activity, a turbulent tribune in the third consulate of 
Pompeius. Expelled from the Senate by the censors of 50 B.c., 
he returned with Caesar, holding military command in the wars 
and governing a province. 1 The end of Caesar abated the 
ambition of Sallustius—and his belief in reform and progress. 
He had once composed pamphlets, indicating a programme of 
order and regeneration for the new government that should 
replace the narrow and corrupt oligarchy of the nobiles . 1 In his 
disillusionment, now that Rome had relapsed under a Sullan 
despotism, retired from public life but scorning ignoble ease or 
the pursuits of agriculture and hunting, 3 he devoted himself to 
history, a respectable activity. 4 After monographs on the Con¬ 
spiracy of Catilina and the War of Jugurtha, he proposed to 
narrate the revolutionary’ period from the death of Sulla onwards. 
Though Sallustius was no blind partisan of Caesar, his aim, it 
may be inferred, was to demonstrate how rotten and fraudulent 
was the Republican government that ruled at Rome between the 
two Dictatorships. Not Caesar’s invasion of Italy but the violent 
ascension and domination of Pompeius, that was the end of 
political liberty. 

Sallustius studied and imitated the classic document for the 
pathology of civil war, the sombre, intense and passionate chap¬ 
ters of Thucydides. He could not have chosen better, if choice 
there was, for he, too, was witness of a political contest that 
stripped away all principle, all pretence, and showed the authentic 
features of a war between classes. Through experience of affairs, 
candour of moral pessimism and utter lack of political illusions 
the Roman was eminently qualified to narrate the history of a 
revolutionary age. 

Literary critics did not fear to match him with Thucydides, 
admiring in him gravity, concision and, above all, an immortal 
rapidity of narrative. 5 He had certainly forged a style all of his 
own, shunning the harmonies of formal rhetoric and formal 
rhythm, wilfully prosaic in collocation of words, hard and archaic 

1 He was proconsul of Africa Nova in 46-45 b.c 1 . 

2 Dio 43, 9, 2—though this may not be convincing evidence, for it may derive 
from a belief, natural enough, in the authenticity of the very plausible Epistulae ad 
Caesarem senem. 

3 BC 4, 1: ‘non fuit consilium socordia atque desidia bonum otium conterere, 
neque vero agrum colundo aut venando, servilibus ofheiis, intentum actatem agere.’ 

4 BJ 4, 1 : ‘ceterum ex albs negotiis, quae ingenio excrcentur, in primis magno 
usui est memoria rerum gestarum.’ 

5 Quintilian 10, 1, 101: ‘nec opponere Thucydidi Sallustium verear’; ib. 102: 
hmmortalem illam Sallusti vclocitatem.' 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 249 

in vocabulary, with brief broken sentences, reflecting perhaps 
some discordance in his own character. The archaisms were 
borrowed, men said, lifted from Cato; not less so the grave 
moral tone, flagrant in contrast with his earlier life. No matter: 
Sallustius at once set the fashion of a studied archaic style and 
short sentences, ending abruptly; 1 and he laid down the model 
and categories of Roman historiography for ever after. 

Sallustius wrote of the decay of ancient virtue and the ruin of 
the Roman People with all the melancholy austerity of a moralist 
and a patriot. In assigning the origin of the decline to the 
destruction of Carthage, and refusing to detect any sign of internal 
discord so long as Rome had to contend with rivals for empire, 
he imitated Greek doctrines of political development and did 
more than justice to the merits of Senate and People in earlier 
days. 2 There was no idealization in his account of a more recent 
period—he knew it too well; and the immediate and palpable 
present bore heavily upon the historian, imperatively recalling 
the men and acts of forty years before, civil strife and the levying 
of private armies, conscription of slaves and servile wars, un¬ 
ending contests in Sicily, Africa and Spain, sieges and destruction 
of Etruscan cities, the desolation of the land of Italy, massacre for 
revenge or gain and the establishment of despotic power. 3 With 
the past returned all the shapes and ministers of evil, great and 
small—Vettius the Picene, the scribe Cornelius and the unspeak¬ 
able Fufidius. 4 The young Pompeius, fair of face but dark 
within, murderous and unrelenting, took on the contemporary 
features of a Caesarian military leader. 5 

Civil war, tearing aside words, forms and institutions, gave 
rein to individual passions and revealed the innermost workings 
of human nature: Sallustius, plunging deeper into pessimism, 
found it bad from the roots. History, to be real and true, would 
have to concern itself with something, more than the public 
transactions of men and cities, the open debate of political assem¬ 
blies or the marching of armies. From Sallustius history acquired 
that preoccupation with human character, especially in its secret 

1 Seneca, Epp. 114, 17: ‘Sallustio vigente amputatae sententiae et verba ante 
exspectatum cadentia et obscura brevitas fuere pro cultu.’ 

2 Sallust, BJ 41; BC 10; Hist. 1, iim. 

3 Sallust, Hist. 1, 55, 13 f. M: ‘leges iudicia aerarium provinciae reges penes 
unum, denique necis civium et vitae licentia. siniul humanas hostias vidistis et 
sepulcra infecta sanguine civili.' 

4 lb. 1, 55, 17 and 22 M. 

5 lb. 2, 16 m: ‘oris probi, animo inverecundo.’ 



250 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

thoughts and darker operations, which it never lost so long as 
the art was practised in the classical manner of the Roman 
and the senator, archaic yet highly sophisticated, sombre but not 
edifying. 

Men turned to history for instruction, grim comfort or political 
apology, raising dispute over the dead. The controversy abou 
Cato began it. Then Caesar the Dictator became a subject of liter 
ary warfare, for a time at least, until his heir discountenance 
an uncomfortable theme. Oppius and Balbus came forwar i 
to protect the memory of their friend and patron. 1 Nor w; 
Sallustius unmindful of his own political career and arguments 
of defence or apology: his testimony to the peculiar but con¬ 
trasted greatness of Caesar and Cato denied rank of comparison 
to Pompeius Magnus. 2 The Pompeians retorted by scandalous 
imputations about the character of the Caesarian writer. 3 

In Rome of the Triumvirs men became intensely conscious of 
history, not merely of recent wars and monarchic faction-leaders 
like Sulla, Pompeius and Caesar, but of a wider and even more 
menacing perspective. They might reflect upon the death of 
Alexander the Macedonian, the long contests for power among 
the generals his successors, the breaking of his empire into 
separate kingdoms; and they could set before them the heirs and 
the marshals of Caesar, owing no loyalty to Rome but feigned 
devotion to a created divinity, Divus Julius , assuming for them¬ 
selves the names or attributes of gods, and ruling their diverse 
kingdoms with the hazardous support of mercenary armies. 
There was fair evidence at hand to confirm the deeply-rooted 
belief, held among the learned and the vulgar alike, that history 
repeated itself in cyclical revolutions. For Rome it might appear 
to be the time of Sulla come again; in a larger sphere, the epoch of 
the kings who inherited the empire of Alexander. To discern 
which demanded no singular gift of perspicacity: it is the merit 
of the least pretentious of contemporary writers, Cornelius Nepos, 
who compiled brief historical biographies designed for use in 
schools, that he drew the parallel so clearly when alluding to the 
behaviour of the veteran armies. 4 

1 Suetonius, Divus Julius 53; 81, 2. 

2 Sallust, BC 53, 5 f. 

3 Varro made the most of Sallustius’ alleged adultery with Fausta, Sulla’s 
daughter and Milo’s wife (Gellius 17, 18); and Lenaeus, the freedman of Pompeius, 
defended his dead patron by bitter personal invective (Suetonius, De gram. 15). 

4 Vita Eumenis 8, 3: ‘quod si quis illorum veteranorum legat facta, paria horum 
cognoscat nequc rem ullam nisi tempus interesse iudicet.’ 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 251 

History and oratory furnished suitable and indeed laudable 
occupation for members of the governing class: the retired 
politician might with propriety occupy his leisure in recording 
momentous events, himself no mean part of them, or in digesting 
the legal and religious antiquities of the Roman People. The 
writing of Roman history, adorned in the past by the names of a 
Fabius, a Cato, a Calpurnius, was so patently the pride and 
monopoly of the senator that it was held a matter of note, if not 
of scandal, when an inferior person presumed to tread such 
august precincts: a freedman, the tutor of Pompeius Magnus, 
was the first of his class. 1 So popular had history become. On 
the writing of poetry, however, the Roman aristocrat, though he 
might turn a verse with ease, or fill a volume, set no especial 
value. But it was now becoming evident that poetry, besides and 
above mere invective, could be made an instrument of govern¬ 
ment by conveying a political message, unobtrusive, but perhaps 
no less effective, than the spoken or written word of Roman 
statesmen. 

In little more than twenty years a generation and a school of 
Roman poets had disappeared almost to a man. Lucretius, who 
turned into epic verse the precepts of Epicurus, the passionate 
young lyric poets Calvus and Catullus, all died shortly before 
the outbreak of the Civil Wars. C. Helvius Cinna, the learned 
author of an elaborate and obscure poem called Smyrna , was 
torn to pieces by the Roman mob in mistake for one of the 
assassins of Caesar; Q. Cornificius, another Caesarian, orator 
and poet, perished in Africa, commanding an army for the Re¬ 
public; neither Valerius Cato, the instructor of young poets, 
nor M. Furius Bibaculus, who wrote epigrams, elegies and an 
epic, were probably now alive. The origin of these poets was 
diverse. Lucretius stands solitary and mysterious, but Calvus 
was a nobilis and Cornificius was born of reputable senatorial 
stock. The rest all came from the province of Gallia Cisalpina, 
Cato, it was alleged (perhaps falsely), a freedman, z the others, 
however, sons of wealthy families from the local aristocracies in 
the towns of the North—Verona, Brixia, Cremona. 3 

1 L. Voltacilius Pitholaus: ‘primus omnium libertinorum, ut Cornelius Nepos 

opinatur, scribere historiam orsus, nonnisi ab honestissimo quoque scribi solitam 
ad id tempus’ (Suetonius, De rhet. 3). 2 Suetonius, De gram. 11. 

3 Catullus came from Verona. That Brixia was the home of Cinna has been 
inferred from fr. 1 of his poems; and Helvii are not unknown on inscriptions of 
Brixia (above, p. 79). Jerome, Chrort., p. 148 H, gives Cremona as the birth-place of 
Bibaculus. 



252 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

The new poets, as they were called, possessed a common 
doctrine and technique: it was their ambition to renovate Latin 
poetry and extend its scope by translating the works or adapting 
the themes and forms of the Alexandrine poets. In politics, like¬ 
wise, a common bond. Many of them had attacked in lampoon 
and invective the dynast Pompeius, his ally Caesar and their 
creature Vatinius. With Caesar reconciliation was possible, but 
hardly with Pompeius. Cornificius, Cinna, and others of their 
friends were found on Caesar’s side when war came. 1 

The men were dead, and their fashion of poetry lost favour 
rapidly. Young Propertius came too late. The consular Pollio, 
however, who had ties with the new poets, survived to write verses 
himself and extend his patronage to others. Under the rule of 
the Triumvirate he was known to be composing tragedies about 
the monarchs of mythical antiquity; 2 before that, however, he 
had earned the gratitude of two poets, Gallus and Virgil. 

C. Cornelius Gallus, of native stock from I'orum Julii in Gallia 
Narbonensis, a province not unknown to Greek culture, was an 
innovator in the Hellenistic vein, renowned as the inventor of 
Roman elegy. He first emerges into authentic history when Pollio 
in a letter to Cicero mentions ‘my friend, Cornelius Gallus’. 3 * 
The poet may have served as an equestrian officer on the staff of 
Pollio when he governed the Cisalpina for Antonius (41-40 b.c.). 3 

To Pollio fell the duty of confiscating lands in the north after 
Philippi; and Pollio is the earliest patron of Virgil, who was the 
son of an owner of property from the town of Mantua. Pollio’s 
good offices may have preserved or restored the poet’s estate so 
long as he held Cisalpina, but the disturbances of the Perusian 
War supervened, and whatever the truth of the matter, a greater 
than Pollio earned or usurped the ultimate and enduring credit. 5 

Gallus, losing to a rival the lady of his passion and ostensible 
source of his inspiration (he had inherited her from another), 6 

1 Above, p. 63. 2 Horace, Sat. i, io, 42 f. 

3 Ad Jam. 10, 32, 5, cf. 31, 6. 

4 Perhaps in the important post of praefcctus fabrwn (cf. Balbus and Mamurra 

under Caesar in Spain and Gaul respectively). 

5 The various statements concerning the date and occasion when Virgil's estate 
was confiscated, the manner and agents of its recovery, as retailed by the ancient 
Lives and scholiasts with more confidence than consistency, appear to derive from 
inferences from the Eclogues themselves, not from ascertained and well-authenticated 
facts: they cannot be employed in historical reconstruction. 

6 His Lycoris is alleged to have been Volumnia (the freedwoman of P. Volum- 
nius Eutrapelus), better known as Cytheris, formerly the mistress of Antonius. 
Her subsequent attachments have not been recorded. 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 253 

abandoned poetry for a career of war and politics, disappearing 
utterly from historical record to emerge after nine years in splen¬ 
dour and power. He had probably gone eastwards with Antonius 
soon after the Pact of Brundisium: 1 how long he remained an 
Antonian, there is no evidence at all. 

Virgil, however, persevered with poetry, completing his 
Eclogues while Pollio governed Macedonia for Antonius. It was 
about this time, in the absence of Pollio, that he was ensnared by 
more powerful and perhaps more seductive influences. 2 Maece¬ 
nas, whose aesthetic tastes were genuine and varied, though not 
always creditable, was on the watch for talent. He gathered an 
assortment of poets, offering protection, counsel and subsidy. 
Virgil passed into the company and friendship of Maecenas. 
Before long his poems were made public (38 or 37 n.c.). Maecenas 
encouraged him to do better. The mannered frivolity and imi¬ 
tated graces of the Eclogues had already been touched by con¬ 
temporary politics and quickened to grander themes when the 
pastoral poet celebrated in mystical splendour the nuptials of 
Antonius, the peace of Brundisium and the end of all the wars. 
Maecenas hoped to employ Virgil's art in the service of Caesar’s 
heir. The heroic and military age demanded an epic poem for 
its honour; and history was now in favour. Bibaculus and the 
Narbonensian poet P. Terentius Varro had sung of the campaigns 
of Caesar; 3 and a certain Cornelius Severus was writing, or 
was soon to write, the history of the Bellum Siculum as an epic 
narrative. 4 

But the poet was reluctant, the patron too wise to insist. Yet 
something might be done. It was folly not to exploit the treasures 
of erudition that Varro had consigned to public use; if not the 
national antiquities, then perhaps the land and the peasant. 
Varro’s books on agriculture had newly appeared; men had be¬ 
wailed for years that Italy was become a desert; and the hardships 
imposed by the Bellum Siculum , revealing the dependence of 

1 Not that there is any definite evidence at all: the Arcadian scenery of Eel. 10 
could not safely be invoked to show that Callus was in Greece. 

2 In Eel. 8, 6 -13 Virgil addresses Pollio, anticipating his return and triumph, in 
a tone and manner that would have been fitting if the whole collection were being 
dedicated to him (cf. esp. 1. 11, 'a te principiuiu, tibi desinet’). This looks like the 
original dedication: but a poem in honour of Octavianus stands at the head of the 
series. 

Varro wrote a Bellum Sequanicum (Priscian, GL 2, 497, 10); and Furius, author 
of Annales belli Gallici (cf. esp. Horace, Sat. 2, 5, 41), may well be Bibaculus, 
though this has been disputed. 

4 Quintilian 10, 1, 89: ‘versificator quam poeta melior.’ 



254 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

Italy on imported corn, may have reinforced the argument for 
self-sufficiency, and called up from the Roman past a figure 
beloved of sentimental politicians, the sturdy peasant-farmer. 
Varro, however, had described the land of Italy as no desolation 
but fruitful and productive beyond comparison; 1 Italy had 
barely been touched by the wars; and it would have been a 
anachronism to revert from vine and olive to the growing < 
cereals for mere subsistence. But Virgil intended to compose 
poem about Italy, not a technical handbook; he wrote about t 
country and the life of the farmer in a grave, religious a 
patriotic vein. 

Virgil was not the only discovery of Maecenas. Virgil with 
short delay had introduced Horace to his new patron, I the 
company of statesmen, diplomatists and other poets, such as the 
tragedian Varius Rufus, they journeyed together to Brundisium, 
at that time when the rulers of the world were to meet not far 
away at Tarentum (37 b.c.). 2 

Q. Horatius Flaccus was the son of a wealthy freedman from 
Venusia, a city of Apulia, who believed in the value of education 
and was willing to pay for the best. The young man was sent to 
prosecute higher studies at Athens. The arrival of Brutus, a 
noble, a patriot and a friend of liberal pursuits, aroused 
enthusiasm in a city that honoured the memory of tyrannicides. 
Horace was swept from the lectures of philosophers into the 
army of the Liberators. He fought at Philippi, for the Re¬ 
public—but not from Republican convictions: it was but the 
accident of his presence at a university city, at an impressionable 
age and in the company of young men of the Roman aristocracy. 

Defeat brought impoverishment and the constraint to solicit 
and hold the petty employ of a scribe, with leisure, however, and 
scope for literary occupations, in his earliest verses showing the 
bitterness of his lot, until a balanced and resilient temperament 
reasserted its rights. Horace now composed satires—but not in 
the traditional manner of Lucilius. His subject was ordinary life, 
his treatment not harsh and truculent, but humane and tolerant: 
which suited his own temperament. Nor would the times now 
permit political satire or free attack upon the existing order in 
state and society. Republican libertas , denied to the nobiles of 
Rome, could not be conceded to a freedman’s son. 

1 Varro, RR 1, 2, 3: ‘vos qui multas perambulastis terras, ecquam cultiorem 
Italia vidistis?’ 

2 Horace, Sat. 1,5. 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 255 

Horace had come to manhood in an age of war and knew the 
age for what it was. Others might succumb to black despair: 
Horace instead derived a clear, firm and even metallic style, a 
distrust of sentiment and a realistic conception of human life. He 
insisted upon modernity, both in style and in subject, already 
setting forth in practice what he was later to formulate as a 
literary theory—a healthy distaste both for archaism and for 
Alexandrianism, a proper regard for those provinces of human 
life which lie this side of romantic eroticism or mythological 
erudition. He wished to transcend and supersede both the 
archaic Roman classics and the new models of the preceding 
generation. Fashions had altered rapidly. A truly modern litera¬ 
ture, disdaining the caprice of individual tastes in love or politics, 
would assert the primacy of common sense and social stability. 

In Rome under the Triumvirs it was more easy to witness and 
affirm the passing of the old order than to discern the manner 
and fashion of the new. On the surface, consolidation after 
change and disturbance: beneath, no confidence yet or unity, 
but discord and disquiet. Italy was not reconciled to Rome, or 
class to class. As after Sulla, the colonies of veterans, while 
maintaining order for the government, kept open the wounds of 
civil war. There was material for another revolution: it had 
threatened to break out during the Sicilian War. 1 When public 
order lapsed, when cities or individuals armed for protection, 
brigandage became prevalent: the retainers of an owner of 
land, once enlisted in his defence, might escape from control, 
terrorize their neighbourhood and defy the government. After 
the end of the campaigns in Sicily, Calvisius Sabinus was ap¬ 
pointed to a special commission to restore order in the country¬ 
side. 2 With some success—a few years later charges of highway 
robbery outstanding against certain senators could at last be 
annulled. 3 

The Caesarian soldiers were tumultuous from pride in their 
"exploits, conscious that by their support the government stood 
or fell. Grave mutinies broke out in 36 and in 35 B.c., 4 harbingers 
of trouble before—or after—the contest with Antonius. Rome 
had witnessed a social revolution, but it had been arrested in 
time. After the next subversion of public order it might go 
farther, embracing not only impoverished citizens but aliens 
and slaves. There had been warning signs. The conservative 

1 Dio 49, 15, 1. 2 Appian, BC 5, 132, 547, cf. Suetonius, Divus Aug. 32, 1. 

3 Dio 49, 43, 5. 4 lb. 49, 13, 1 ff.; 34, 3 f - 



2 5 6 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

sentiments of the beneficiaries of the proscriptions, newly ac¬ 
quired along with their wealth and status, assumed the form of 
a dislike of freedmen and foreigners. Aliens had served in the 
legions of the Roman People; and the dynasts were lavish in grants 
of the franchise. In times of peace and unshaken empire the 
Roman had been reluctant to admit the claims of foreign peoples: 
with insecurity his pride turned, under the goad of fear, into 
a fanatical hatred. 

The Roman could no longer derive confidence from the 
language, habits and religion of his own people. It was much 
more than the rule of the nobi/es that had collapsed at Philippi. 
The doom of empire was revealed—the ruling people would 
be submerged in the innumerable hordes of its subjects. The 
revolutionary years exposed Rome to the full onrush of foreign 
religions or gross superstitions, invading all classes. T. Sextius, 
the Caesarian general in Africa, carried with him a bull’s head 
wherever he went. 1 The credit of omens and astrology grew 
steadily. The Triumvirs were powerless to oppose—subservient 
to popular favour, they built a temple, consecrated to the service 
of the Egyptian gods. 2 When Agrippa in 33 B.c. expelled astro¬ 
logers and magicians from Rome, 3 that was only a testimony to 
their power, an attempt of the government to monopolize the 
control of prophecy and propaganda. 

Yet in some classes there was stirring an interest in Roman 
history and antiquities, a reaction from alien habits of thought. 
Inspired by the first beginnings of a patriotic revival, the new taste 
for history might be induced to revert to the remotest origins of 
the Roman People, august and sanctioned by divine providence; 
ancient legends could be employed to advertise in literature and 
on monuments the glory and the traditions of a family, a dynasty, 
a whole people; 4 and a return to the religious forms and practices 
of Rome w ould pow erfully contribute to the restoration of politi¬ 
cal stability and national confidence. The need was patent— 
but the rulers of Rome claimed the homage due to gods and 
masqueraded, for domination over a servile world, in the guise 
of divinity, Caesar’s heir as Apollo, Antonius as Dionysus. 5 
It w r as by no means evident how they were to operate a fusion 

1 Dio 48, 21, 3. 2 lb. 47, T5,4. 3 lb. 49, 43, 5. 

4 The reliefs showing scenes from early Roman history recently discovered in the 
Basilica Aermlia may belong to Paullus’ work in 34 B.c. (Dio 49, 42, 2): there was, 
however, a restoration after damage by fire in 14 B.c. (ib. 54, 24, 2 f.). 

5 On this, cf. especially L. R. Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (1931), 
100 ff. 



ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 257 

between absolute monarchy and national patriotism, between a 
world-empire and the Roman People. The new order in state and 
society still lacked its shape and final formulation. 

This intermediate epoch showed in all things a strange mixture 
of the old and the new. Despite the losses of war and proscrip¬ 
tions, there was still to be found in the higher ranks of the Senate 
a number of men who had come to maturity in years when 
Rome yet displayed the name and the fabric of a free state. 
That was not so long ago. But they had changed with the times, 
rapidly. Of the Republicans, the brave men and the true had 
perished: the survivors were willing to make their peace with the 
new order, some in resignation, others from ambition. Aheno- 
barbus with Antonius, Messalla and other nobles in the alliance 
of Caesar's heir, had shown the way. The new monarchy could 
not rule without help from the old oligarchy. 

The order of knights had everything to gain from the coercion 
of the governing class and the abolition of active politics: their 
sentiments concerning state and society did not need to under¬ 
go any drastic transformation. The politician and the orator 
perished, but the banker and man of affairs survived and pros¬ 
pered. Atticus by his accommodating manners won the friend¬ 
ship of Caesar's heir without needing to break with Antonius-- 
a sign and portent of the unheroic qualities that commanded suc¬ 
cess, and even earned repute, in the well-ordered state which he 
almost lived to see firmly established. 1 T. Pomponius Atticus 
died in 32 B.c., aged seventy-seven: at his bedside stood old Balbus 
and Marcus Agrippa, the husband of Caeeilia Attica. 2 

The lineaments of a new policy had become discernible, the 
prime agents were already at work. But the acts of the young 
dynast even now can hardly have foretold the power and splen¬ 
dour of the future monarch. Antonius was absent from Italy, 
but Antonius was the senior partner. Ilis prestige, though 
waning, was still formidable enough in 33 B.c.; and it is fatally 
easy to overestimate the strength and popularity that by now had 
accrued to Octavianus. It was great, indeed, not so much by 
contrast with Antonius as with his earlier situation. Octavianus 
was no longer the terrorist of Perusia. Since then seven years 
had passed. But he was not yet the leader of all Italy. In this 

1 Nepos, Vita Attici 19 f. Octavianus wrote to him almost every day (lb. 20, 2): 
yet Atticus was also in sustained correspondence with M. Antonius, from the 
ends of the earth (20, 4). A few years earlier the infant granddaughter of Atticus, 
Vipsania, was betrothed to Ti. Claudius Nero, the step-son of Octavianus (19, 4). 

2 lb. 21,4. Balbus probably died not long after this. 



258 ROME UNDER THE TRIUMVIRS 

bn f lull when many feared the imminent clash and some 
favoured Caesar’s heir, none could have foreseen by what arts a 
national champion was to prevail and a nation be forged in the 
struggle. 

One thing was clear. Monarchy was already there and would 
subsist, whatever principle was invoked in the struggle, whatever 
name the victor chose to give to his rule, because it was f< 
monarchy that the rival Caesarian leaders contended—‘cum : 
uterque principem non solum urbis Romae, sed orbis terrarur 
esse cuperet.’ 1 

1 Nepos, Vita Attici 20, 5. 



XIX. ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 


AFTER Brundisium the prestige of Antonius stood high, and 
his predominance was confirmed by the renewal of the 
Triumvirate at Tarentum—when that office lapsed, Antonian 
consuls would be in power at Rome. Antonius had already lost 
the better part of two years—not Ventidius but the victor of 
Philippi should have driven the Parthians out of Asia. When at 
last his hands were free he departed to Syria, summoning thither 
the most powerful and most wealthy of the Roman vassals, the 
Queen of Egypt: he had not seen her for nearly four years. 
Fonteius brought her to Antioch, where they spent the winter of 
the year 37-36 in counsel and carouse. 1 The invasion of Media 
and Parthia was designed for the next summer. 

The dependent kingdoms of the East furnished the traditional 
basis of Roman economy and Roman security. The Parthian 
incursion revealed grave defects in system and personnel—most 
of the native dynasts proved incompetent or treacherous. In 
many of the kings, tetrarchs and petty tyrants abode loyalty, not 
to Rome, but to Pompeius their patron, whose cause suddenly 
revived when young Labienus broke through the Taurus with 
a Parthian army, encountering no resistance from Antipater the 
lord of Derbe and Laranda, whose principality lay beside the 
high road into Asia. 2 The kings of Commagene and Cappadocia 
lent help to the invader, while Deiotarus, the most military of 
them all, lay low, aged but not decrepit: true to himself, he had 
just grasped possession of all Galatia, murdering a tetrarch and a 
tetrarch’s wife, his own daughter. 3 But Deiotarus died in the 
year of the Parthian invasion. 4 

In this emergency men of wealth and standing in Asia, among 
them the famous orators Hybreas of Mylasa and Zeno of Laodicea, 
took up arms to defend their cities; 5 and a brigand called Cleon, 
born in an obscure Phrygian village, harried and destroyed 
the invaders in the borderlands of Asia and Bithynia. 6 After the 
expulsion of the Parthians Rome required new rulers for the 
future in the eastern lands. Antonius discovered the men and set 
them up as kings without respect for family or dynastic claims. 


1 Plutarch, Antonius 36. 
3 Strabo, p. 568. 

5 Strabo, p. 66o. 


2 Strabo, p. 569; IGRR iv, 1694. 

♦ Dio 48, 33, 5. 
6 lb., p. 574 - 



260 ANTONI US IN THE EAST 

He had Caesar’s eye for talent. After the Pact of Brundisium 
the Triumvirs invested Herod the Idumaean with insignia of 
royalty. A year later the Galatian Amyntas (formerly secretary 
to King Deiotarus) and Polcmo, the able son of Zeno of Laodicea, 
received kingdoms. Other arrangements were made from time 
to time, but it was not until the winter of 37-36 B.c. that the 
principalities were built up into a solid and well-balanced struc¬ 
ture, with every promise of long duration. 1 

East of the Hellespont there were to be three Roman provinces 
only, Asia, Bithynia and Syria. For the rest, the greater part of 
the eastern territories was consigned to four kings, to rule as 
agents of Rome and wardens of the frontier zone. A Roman 
province, Cilicia, had disappeared, mainly for the benefit of 
Amyntas the Galatian, who received a vast domain, embracing 
Galatia, Pisidia, Lycaonia and other regions, from the river 
Halys south-westwards to the coast of Pamphylia. To Archelaus, 
the son of the seductive Glaphyra, fell the kingdom of Cappa¬ 
docia. Polemo assumed control of the north-east, holding Pontus 
and Armenia Minor. Herod was the fourth king. The policy— 
and the choice of the agents—goes beyond all praise: it was vindi¬ 
cated by history and by the judgement of Antonins’enemies. 

Another realm reposed in the gift of Rome—-Egypt, the last of 
the kingdoms of Alexander’s successors, the most coherent and 
durable of them all: a loss if destroyed, a risk to annex, a problem 
to govern. Antonius resolved to augment the territories of Egypt. 
To Cleopatra he gave dominions in Syria, namely, the central 
Phoenician coast and the tetrarchy of Chalcis; further, the island 
of Cyprus and some cities of Cilicia Aspera. The donation was 
not magnificent in extent of territories, for Cleopatra received 
no greater accession than did other dynasts; 2 but her portion was 
exceedingly rich. Her revenues were also swollen by the gift of the 
balsam groves near Jericho and the monopoly of the bitumen from 
the Dead Sea. That munificence did not content the dynastic 
pride and rapacity of Egypt’s Queen: again and again she sought 
to extort from Antonius portions of Herod’s dominions. 3 She 

1 On these dispositions, including the territorial grants to Egypt, see especially 
J. Kromaycr, Hermes xxix (1894), 579 fT.; U. Kahrstedt, ‘Syrische Territorien in 
hcllenistischer Zeit’, Gtitt. Ahh. phil.-hist . Kl. xix, 2 (1926), 105; M. A. Levi, 
Ottaviano Capoparte n, 122 ; J. Dobia§, Melanges Bidez (1934), 287 fT.; W. W. Tarn, 
CAH x, 34; 66 fT.; 80. The province of Cilicia, if not earlier fused with Syria, 
certainly ended in 39 h.c. 

2 Cf. J. Kromayer, Hermes xxix (1894), 579. 

3 Emphasized by Kromayer, ib. 585. The evidence of Josephus is clear and valu¬ 
able, AJ 1 5, 75 fT.; 79 ; 88 ; 91 f.; 13 1. 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 261 

coveted the whole of his kingdom, to form a continuous terri¬ 
tory northwards into Syria. Antonius refused to give her any 
more. 

These grants do not seem to have excited alarm or criticism at 
Rome: only later did they become a sore point and pretext for 
defamation. For Cleopatra the donations of Antonius marked 
the resurgence of the Ptolemaic kingdom in splendour and wealth, 
though not in military power. She had reconstituted her heritage, 
now possessing the realm of Ptolemy Philadelphus—except for 
Judaea. The occasion was to be celebrated in Egypt and reckoned 
as the beginning of a new era. 1 

But the relations of Antonius and Cleopatra were not merely 
those of proconsul and vassal-ruler. After Antonius’ departure 
from Egypt nearly four years earlier, Cleopatra had given birth 
to twin children, not a matter of any importance hitherto—at 
least in so far as concerned Roman politics, the rival Caesarian 
leader or even the parent himself. Antonius now acknowledged 
paternity. The mother bestowed upon the children the high- 
sounding names of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene; 2 her 
next child was to bear the historic and significant name of 
Philadelphus. It has been argued that precisely on this occasion 
Antonius contracted a marriage with Cleopatra, reconstituting 
the Ptolemaic kingdom as a wedding-gift. 3 The fact is difficult 
to establish. 

From the Egyptian alliance Antonius hoped to derive money 
and supplies for his military enterprises. Egypt, the most valuable 
of the dependencies, should not be regarded as paramount and 
apart, but as one link in a chain of kingdoms that ran north to 
Pontus and westwards to Thrace, wedged between or protecting 
on front and flank the Roman provinces of Syria, Bithynia, Asia 
and Macedonia. These vassal-states, serving the needs of govern¬ 
ment and defence, were not knit together by any principle of 
uniformity but depended upon the ties of personal allegiance. 
Pompeius Magnus, binding to his clientele1 all the kings, dynasts 
and cities of the wide East, had show n the way to imperial power. 
Beside princes of blood or title, the personal following of Rome’s 
ruler in the East might suitably be extended to embrace the whole 
aristocracy in town and country—priestly houses descended from 
kings and gods of timeless antiquity, possessing royal fortunes in 

1 W. W. Tarn, CAH x, 81. 

2 \d.,JRSxxn (1932), 144 ff. 

3 J. Kromayer, Hermes xxix (1894), 582 ff.; W. W. Tarn ; CAH X, 66. 




262 ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 

inherited estates or the fruits of mercantile operations, dynastic in 
their own right. 

Caesar did his best to equal or usurp the following of Pompeius, 
with grants of Roman citizenship or favours fiscal and honorific 
to cities and to prominent individuals. He rewarded Theopompus 
and other Cnidians, Potamo the son of Lesbonax from Mytilene 
(perhaps a rival of the great Theophanes), and Satyrus from 
Chersonesus. 1 Mithridates the Pergamene, son of a Galatian 
tetrarch but reputed bastard of the king of Pontus, raised troops 
for Caesar and won a kingdom for his reward ; 2 and Antipater tne 
Idumaean, who had lent help to Gabinius and to Caesar, governed 
in Judaea, though the ancient Hasmonean house, now decadent, 
retained title and throne. 3 In the eastern lands many Julii reveal 
their patron by their names, despots great and small or leading 
men in their own cities and influential outside them. 4 Dominant 
in politics, commerce and literature, these men formed and pro¬ 
pagated the public opinion of the Hellenic world. 

Antonins went farther. During the War of Mutina he publicly 
asserted the cause of Caesar's friend Theopompus. 5 Now stand¬ 
ing in the place of Pompeius and Caesar as master of the eastern 
lands, not only did he invest Polemo, the orator's son from 
Laodicea, with a great kingdom: he gave his own daughter 
Antonia in marriage to Pythodorus of Tralles, formerly a friend 
of Pompeius, a man of fabulous wealth and wide influence in 
Asia, founding thereby a line of kings. 6 

It was not enough to acquire the adherence of influential 
dynasts over all the East, friends of Rome and friends of 
Antonius. A ruler endowed with liberal foresight would seek to 
demonstrate that the Roman was not a brutal conqueror but one 
of themselves, displaying not tolerant superiority but active good 

1 M. Rostovtzeff, JRS vn (1917), 27 ff., with especial reference to Satyrus 
(IOSPE I 2 , 691), but mentioning other Caesarian partisans in the East. For 
Theopompus and Callistus, cf. SIG 3 761 and evidence there quoted; for Potamo, 
SIG 3 754 and 764. 

2 P-W xv, 2205 f. Caesar gave him a Galatian tetrarchy and the kingdom of 
Bosporus (Bell. Al. 78, 2; Strabo, p. 625). 

3 Josephus, AJ 14, 137; 143; 162, &c. 

4 It is seldom possible, however, to determine whether they got the franchise 
from Caesar or from Augustus. 

5 Cicero, Phil. 13,33: ‘magnum crimen senatus. dc Theopompo, summo homine, 
negleximus, qui, ubi terrarum sit, quid agat, vivat denique an mortuus sit, quis aut 
scit aut curat?’ Antonius also complained of the execution of Caesar’s Thessalian 
friends Petraeus and Menedemus (ib.). 

6 Cf. PIR\ P 835. He was worth twelve million denarii. His daughter was to 
marry Polemo, King of Pontus. 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 263 

will. Regard for Hellenic sentiments would reinforce peace and 
concord through alliance with the men of property and influence. 1 
A day would come when the ruling class in the cities of Asia 
might hope to enter the Senate of Rome, take rank with their 
peers from Italy and the western provinces and blend with them 
in a new imperial aristocracy. 

Mytilene paid honour and the appellation of saviour and 
benefactor not only to Pompeius Magnus but also to his client 
Theophanes. 2 The example was nothing novel or untimely: it 
revealed a habit and created a policy. At Ephesus all Asia pro¬ 
claimed Caesar as a god manifest, son of Ares and Aphrodite, 
universal saviour of mankind. 3 Antonius advertised the favour 
he enjoyed from Dionysus; and his own race was fabled to descend 
from Heracles. Both gods brought gladness and succour to 
humanity. Before the eyes of the Greek world Antonius could 
parade imperially, not only as a monarch and a soldier, but as a 
benefactor to humanity, a protector of the arts, a munificent 
patron of poets and orators, actors and philosophers. The style 
of his oratory was ornate and pompous, veritably Asianic, 
the fashion of his life regal and lavish—‘Antonius the great 
and inimitable’. 4 Thus did Antonius carry yet farther the policy 
of Pompeius and Caesar, developing and perhaps straining the 
balanced union between Roman party leader and Hellenistic 
dynast in one person; the latter role would be sensibly enhanced 
by the glory of victory in Parthia—or by a defeat, constraining 
the Roman to lean more heavily on the support of eastern allies. 

Antonius set out upon his great campaign, leaving Syria in the 
spring of 36 B.C., in the design to avenge the disaster of Crassus, 
display the prestige of Rome and provide for the future security 
of the Empire, not by annexation of fresh territories as Roman 
provinces, but by an extension of the sphere of vassal kingdoms. 
He adopted the plan of campaign attributed to Caesar the 
Dictator—not to cross the arid plains of Mesopotamia, as Crassus 
had done, there to be harried by cavalry and arrows. Even if a 

1 On the notion of concord and its connexion with monarchy, cf. E. Skard, 
Zwei religitis-politische Begriffe, Euergetes-Concordia (Oslo, 1932). 

2 SIG 3 751 f. (Pompeius); 753 (Theophanes): dew Ju \_’ E]\c[vde)plw <fnXo7rd - 
t/hSi I 0eo<f>dv7) tw aoj\TrjpL kcli evepyelra teal KTLcrrq. hev\repw ras narploos . This 
sort of thing was described by Tacitus as ‘Graeca adulatio’ (Ann. 6, 18). 

3 SIG 3 760: roy ano "Apecos Kal ’A<f>po8e[t]T7}s deov em^avn kcli kolvov tov | 
dvdpwTTLvov fiiov owr-npa. For other cities, cf. L. R. Taylor, The Divinity of the 
Roman Emperor , 267 f. 

4 OGIS 195 (Alexandria: a private inscription): ' Avtwvlov pUyav | KapLLpLrjToy. 
Cf. Plutarch, Antonius 28. 



264 ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 

Roman army reached Ctesiphon, it might never return. Antonius 
proposed to march through a friendly Armenia, thence invading 
Media Atropatene from the north-west. Canidius in a masterly 
campaign had already reduced the peoples beyond Armenia 
towards the Caucasus, and Canidius was waiting with his legions. 
In the neighbourhood of Erzerum the great army mustered, 
sixteen legions, ten thousand Gallic and Spanish cavalry and the 
levies of the client princes—above all the Armenian horse of 
Artavasdes, for this was essential. 

Of his Roman partisans Antonius took with him Titius, 
Ahenobarbus and others. 1 Plancus, the uncle of Titius, may have 
seen service in this war on the staff of Antonius, though known 
for talents of another kind. 2 Sosius was left in charge of Syria, 
Furnius of Asia, Ahenobarbus had been governor of Bithynia 
since the Pact of Brundisium: who was his successor in that 
province, and who held'Macedonia with the command of Antonius’ 
Balkan army, has not been recorded. 

From their base in Armenia the legions began their long 
march to Phraaspa, the capital city of Media, some five hundred 
miles away. Antonius neglected to set a firm hold on Armenia 
by planting garrisons over the land—perhaps he did not have 
enough legions. Thus Artavasdes, given impunity, could desert 
with his cavalry at a critical moment. The Parthians and Medes, 
well served by treachery and mobility, attacked the Roman com¬ 
munications, cut to pieces two legions under Oppius Statianus 
and destroyed much of Antonius' supplies and artillery. Antonius, 
lacking light horse, could not bring them to battle. It was already 
late in the season when he appeared before the walls of Phraaspa, 
dangerously late when, after a vain siege, he was forced to retreat. 
The winter was upon him. Worn by privations and harried on 
their slow march by the Parthians, the legions struggled back to 
Armenia, saved only by the courage of Antonius and the steadi¬ 
ness of the veterans. As in the retreat from Mutina, Antonius 
showed his best qualities in adversity. From Armenia he marched 
without respite or delay to Syria, for Armenia was unsafe. 
He postponed the revenge upon Artavasdes. 

It was a defeat, but not a rout or a disaster. The Roman losses 
were considerable—early and unfriendly testimony reckons them 

1 Plutarch, Antonius 42 (Titius, as quaestor); 40 (Ahenobarbus); 42 (Flavius 
Gallus, otherwise unknown), 38, cf. Dio 49, 25, 2 (Oppius Statianus, perhaps a 
relative of the Antonian admiral, M. Oppius Capito). 

2 Plancus* second imperatorial salutation {ILS 886) may have been won earlier, 
in 40-39 n.c. 



ANTONI US IN THE EAST 265 

at not less than a quarter of his whole army. 1 Higher estimates 
can be discovered—the failure in Media was soon taken up for 
propaganda and the survivors were not loath to exaggerate their 
sufferings for political advantage, to the discredit of their old 
general. 2 

Antonius was delayed in the next year by the arrival of Sex. 
Pompeius in Asia and by the lack of trained troops. The western 
soldiers were held to be far the best. Eastern levies had an evil 
and often exaggerated reputation—yet Galatia or Macedonia 
could have competed with Italy in valour and even in discipline. 
It would take time to train them: Antonius wanted the twenty 
thousand legionaries that Octavianus had promised to provide. 
The faithless colleague sent seventy ships: of ships Antonius had 
no need. Octavia was instructed by her brother to bring a body 
of two thousand picked men to her husband. 

Antonius was confronted with damaging alternatives. To 
accept was to condone Octavianus* breach of a solemn agreement; 
to refuse, an insult to Octavia and to Roman sentiment. Once 
again Octavia was thrown forward as a pawn in the game of 
high politics, to the profit of her brother, whichever way the ad¬ 
versary moved. 3 Antonius was resentful. He accepted the troops. 
Octavia had come as far as Athens. Her husband told her to go 
back to Rome, unchivalrous for the first time in his life. He was 
dealing with Octavianus: but he learned too late. Octavianus, 
however, was no more ready yet to exploit the affront to his family 
than the affront to Rome arising from Antonius’ alliance and 
marital life with the Queen of Egypt. 

The following year witnessed a turn of fortune in the north¬ 
east and some compensation for the disastrous invasion of Media. 
Antonius marched into Armenia, captured and deposed the 
treacherous Artavasdes. He turned the land into a Roman pro¬ 
vince, leaving there a large army under the tried general Canidius. 
With Media Antonius was now on good terms, for Mede and 
Parthian had at once quarrelled after their victory. Antonius 
betrothed his son Alexander Helios to Iotape, the daughter of the 

1 Velleius 2, 82, 3. Livy, Per. 130, is moderate—two legions cut to pieces, further 
eight thousand men lust on the retreat. Tam (CAH x, 75) fixes the loss at thirty- 
seven per cent, of the whole army. 

2 Q. Dellius subsequently became an historian (Strabo, p. 523; Plutarch, Anto¬ 
nius 59), possibly a very influential source for these transactions. 

3 As in the matter of the conference at Tarentum, the role of Octavia has prob¬ 
ably been embellished. Compare the judicious remarks of Levi (Ottaviano Capo- 
parte 11, 134 fL), discountenancing sentimentality. 



266 ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 

Median monarch. 1 Then in the early spring of 33 b . c . Antonins, 
alert for the care of his dominions and allies, marched out again 
and conferred with the King of Media. Of an invasion of Parthia, 
hope was deferred or abandoned. A larger decision was looming. 
With Armenia a Roman province and the Mede in alliance, the 
Roman frontier seemed secure enough. Only a few months 
passed, however, and the crisis in his relations with Octavianus 
became so acute that Antonius instructed Canidius to bring the 
army down to the sea-coast of Asia. 2 There the legions passed 
the winter of 33-32 b.c. 

In the year 33 b.c., with his frontiers in order and Asia at peace, 
recovering from oppression and looking forward to a new era of 
prosperity, with legions, cavalry, ships and treasure at his com¬ 
mand, Antonius appeared the preponderant partner in a divided 
Empire. With the strong kingdoms of Egypt and Judaea in the 
south and south-east, Rome was secure on that flank and could 
direct her full effort towards the north or the north-east, oriented 
now on the line Macedonia-Bithynia-Pontus. The results would 
soon be evident in the Balkans and on the Black Sea coasts. 

Nor was the preponderance of Antonius less evident in his 
following of Roman senators—his provincial governors, generals, 
admirals and diplomats. 3 Of his earlier Caesarian associates, the 
marshals Ventidius and Decidius were dead. Pollio had abandoned 
public life, perhaps Censorinus had as well. Other partisans may 
already have been verging towards Caesar's heir or neutrality 
with safeguards, in fear of a new civil war between rival leaders. 

1 Dio 49, 40, 2. 2 Plutarch, Antonius 56. 

J On the provincial governors of Antonius, see L. Ganter, Die Provinzialver- 
waltung der Triumvim (Diss. Strassburg, 1892), 31 ff. In the years 40-32 B.c., 
Ganter gives, for Syria, Saxa, Ventidius, Sosius, Plancus and Bibulus; Asia, Plancus 
(39-37) and Fumius (36-35); Macedonia, L. Marcius Censorinus (40) and Pollio 
(39); Bithynia, Ahenobarbus (the only known governor in this period). Cyrene, 
of little importance as a province, was perhaps governed by M. Licinius 
Crassus, compare the coins, BMC , JR. Rep. 11, 532 : L. Pinarius Scarpus is 
attested there in 31 B.c., Dio 51, 5, 6; BMC , R. Rep. 11, 583 ff. To the above list 
should probably be added, as proconsuls of Asia, M. Cocceius Nerva between 
Plancus and Fumius, or perhaps before Plancus (cf. ILS 8780: Lagina in Caria); 
and after Furnius, M. Titius ( ILS 891: Miletus); and Q. Didius, attested in Syria 
in 31 B.c. (Dio 51,7, 3), was perhaps appointed by Antonius. There is no evidence 
of any provincial commands held by L. Caninius Gallus, C. Fonteius Capito or 

L. Flavius. On the coinage of Antonian admirals and governors, see especially 

M. Bahrfeldt, Num. Zeitschr. xxxvii (1905), 9 ff. (Bibulus, Atratinus and Oppius 
Capito); Joum. int. d'arch. num. xi (1908), 215 ff. (Sosiu9, Proculeius and Canidius 
Crassus): Proculeius, however, was surely coining for Octavianus on Cephallenia 
after Actium, cf. BMC , R. Rep. 11, 533. There are many uncertainties in this field. 
Valuable additions and corrections may be expected from the forthcoming work 
of Mr. M. Grant on the aes coinage of the period. 



ANTONI US IN THE EAST 267 

It was later remarked that certain of his most intimate friends 
had once been Antonians. 1 

Evidence is scanty. Yet it cculd be guessed that the Cocceii, 
a new family showing two consuls in four years, were highly 
circumspect. M. Cocceius Nerva and a certain C. Cocceius 
Balbus had held official commands under Antonius ; 2 the amiable 
and diplomatic L. Cocceius, however, may not have left Italy 
after the Pact of Brundisium. 

Plancus remained, high in office and in favour, perhaps aspiring 
to primacy in the party after Antonins. 3 Titius, proscribed and a 
pirate on his own account before joining Sex. Pompeius, shared 
the fortunes of his uncle as an admiral and governor of provinces, 
already designated for a consulate. 4 Prominent, too, in the 
counsels of Antonius was the eloquent Furnius, in the past an ally 
and protege of Cicero, a partisan of Caesar and a legate of Plancus 
in Gaul. 5 Other diplomats were Q. Dellius,who deserted Dola- 
bella and Cassius in turn, and the elegant C. Fonteius Capito, a 
friend of Antonius, who journeyed from Rome to the conference 
of Tarentum. 6 Of no note in the arts of peace were certain military 
men and admirals like Insteius from Pisaurum, Q. Didius and 
M. Oppius Capito, obscure persons, and the two marshals whom 
Antonius had trained—Sosius, the conqueror of Jerusalem, and 
Canidius, who had marched on Pompeius’ path to the Caucasus. 7 


1 Seneca, Dc clent. 1, 10, 1: 'Sallustium et Cocceios et Deillios et totam cohortem 
primae admissionis ex adversariorum castris conscripsit.’ 

2 M. Cocceius Nerva (cos. 36) is honoured on an inscription of Lagina in Caria as 
ovroKpdrwp and benefactor, patron and saviour of the city ( 1 LS 8780). C. Cocceius 
Balbus (cos. suff. 39) also had won an imperatorial .salutation ( 1 G n 2 , 4110: Athens). 
L. Cocceius Nerva did not become consul. 

3 He had charge of the correspondence and seal-ring of Antonius in 35 b.c. 
(Appian, BC 5, 144, 599)- Plancus had a certain following, for example, M. Titius 
and C. Furnius; and a Nerva, perhaps one of the Cocceii, was an intimate, per¬ 
haps a legate, of Plancus in 43 b.c. (AdJam. 10, 18, 1), 

4 ILS 891 (Miletus), which describes him as ‘cos. des.’ and ‘proconsul’ (probably 
of Asia). The origin of Titius is unknown—possibly Picene, cf. CIL ix, 4191 
(Auximum). He was cos. stiff, in 31 B.c. 

5 P-W vii, 375 ff. He was governing Asia for Antonius in 35 (Dio 49, 17, 5; 
Appian, BC 5, 137, 567 ff.). 

6 On Dellius* changes of side, Seneca, Suasoriae 1,7; Velleius, 2, 84, 2. He was 
employed by Antonius on confidential missions, to bring Cleopatra to Tarsus 
(Plutarch, Antonius 25), in Judaea in 40 B.c. (Josephus, AJ 14, 394) and in 36 
(ib. 15, 25), and in negotiation with the King of Armenia in 34 (Dio 49, 39, 2 f.). 
About C. Fonteius Capito (cos. suff. 33) precious little is known. One of the 
negotiators at Tarentum in 37 b.c. (Horace, Sat. 1, 5, 32 f.), he was sent on a 
mission to Egypt by Antonius in the following winter (Plutarch, Antonius 36). 

7 M. Insteius from Pisaurum (Cicero, Phil. 13, 26) fought at Actium (Plutarch, 
Antonius 65). Q. Didius, attested as governor of Syria in the year 31 b.c. (Dio 51, 



268 ANTONI US IN THE EAST 

Antonius had been a loyal friend to Caesar, but not a fanatical 
Caesarian. The avenging of the Dictator and the contriving of a 
new cult, that was Octavianus’ policy and work, not his. The 
contrast did not escape the Republicans. Partly despair, but not 
wholly paradox, drove the remnants of the Catonian and the 
Pompeian parties, among them enemies of Caesar and assassins 
yet unpunished, to find harbourage and alliance with Antonius. 

The Catonian faction, after fighting against the domination of 
Pompeius, recognized a greater danger and hoped to use Pom- 
peius for the Republic against Caesar. Failing in that, it con¬ 
spired with dissident Caesarians and assassinated the Dictator, 
only to bring on worse tyranny. The group had suffered heavy 
casualties. P. Servilius had deserted long ago, Cato and the con¬ 
sular Bibulus and Ahenobarbus were dead; so were Brutus and 
Cassius, Q. Hortensius, young Lucullus and Favonius, the old 
admirer of Cato. There remained, however, enough distinguished 
survivors to support a new combination in the Roman State. 

The young Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, beyond all doubt the 
best of his family, refused to accept amnesty from Caesar the 
Dictator. Of the company of the assassins in will and sympathy, 
if not in the deed, he fought at Philippi. Then, refusing either 
to agree with Messalla that the Republic was doomed, or to trust, 
like Murcus, the alliance with Pompeius (whose whole family he 
hated), Ahenobarbus with his fleet as an autonomous admiral 
dominated the Adriatic, striking coins with family portraits 
thereon. 1 Pollio won him for Antonius, and he served Anto¬ 
nius well. The alliance was firm with promise for the future 
—his son was betrothed to the elder daughter of Antonius. Both 
parties had the habit of keeping faith. In birth and in repute 
Ahenobarbus stood next to Antonius in the new Caesarian and Re¬ 
publican coalition. Another kinsman of Cato was to be found with 
Antonius, his grandson L. Calpurnius Bibulus, also an admiral; 2 
and M. Silanus, a connexion of Brutus, w as now an Antonian. 3 


7, i), is otherwise unknown: perhaps a relative of the Caesarian legate C. Didius 
(Bell. Hisp. 40, r, &c.). M. Oppius Capito is known only from coins (BMC, 
R. Rep . 11, 517 fT.): perhaps of the same family as Antonins’ army commander 
in the invasion of Media, Oppius Statianus (Plutarch, Antonius 38). On the 
Oppii, cf. Munzer, P-W xviii, 726 fF. (forthcoming). On Sosius and Canidius, 
above, p. 200. 

1 BMC, R. Rep. 11, 487 f. (gold and silver, with two types of portrait). 

2 lb. 510 ff. He took a fleet to Sicily in 36 n.c\ to help Octavianus, and was 
governor of Syria in 32, when he died (Appian, BC 4, 38, 162; Syr. 51). 

3 Described on an Athenian inscription as dvriTafuas (SIC 3 767), on coins as 
‘q. pro cos.’ (BMC, R. Rep. 11, 522). Cf. also IG xii, 9, 916 (Chalcis). 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 269 

The last adherents of Sex. Pompeius deserted to Antonius. 1 
His father-in-law I>. Scribonius Libo at once became consul (34 
b.c.), but seems to have lapsed from politics. The young nohiles 
M. Aemilius Scaurus, his half-brother, and Cn. Cornelius Cinna, 
his nephew, remained with Antonius to the end ; 2 likewise minor 
characters, such as the Pompeian admiral Q. Nasidius, and the few 
surviving assassins of Caesar, among them Turullius and Cassius 
of Parma; 3 voung Sentius Saturninus, a relative of Libo, had 
also been among the companions of Pompeius. 

But Catonians and Pompeians do not exhaust the list of 
nobles in the party of Antonius. The consulars L. Gellius Popli- 
cola (cos. 36 B.c.), a half-brother of Messalla and a treacherous 
friend of Brutus, and L. Sempronius Atratinus (cos. suff. 34 B.C.), 
whose sister Poplicola married, could recall a distant and dissi¬ 
pated youth.in the circle of Clodius. 4 Of this literary, social and 
political tradition there was also a reminder in the person of the 
young Curio, loyal to his father's friend, his step-father Antonius. 5 
Other youthful tiobiles among the Antonians were M. Licinius 
Crassus, M. Octavius and a Metellus who defies close identifi¬ 
cation . b 

The total of noble names is impressive when contrasted with 
the following of the rival Caesarian dynast, but decorative rather 
than solid and useful. Many of these men had never yet sat in 
the Roman Senate. That mattered little now, it is true. They 

1 Appian, BC 5, 139, 579. Cf. above, p. 228. 

1 Dio 51, 2, 4 f. (Scaurus). Seneca, De clem. 1, 9, 8, &c. (Cinna): Cinna was 
the son of Pompeia, daughter of Magnus, by her second marriage, namely, with 
T. Cornelius Cinna, praetor in 44 b.c. ( PIR 1 , C 1339). 

} Q. Nasidius ( BMC, R. Rep. 11, 564 f.; Appian, BC 5, 139, 579) fought as an 
admiral at Actium (Dio 50, 13, 5); for Turullius, cf. BMC , R. Rep. 11, 531 ; for 
Cassius of Parma, see Appian, 1 . c., and Velleius 2, 87, 3 (the last of the assassins). 
Cassius is also a figure in literary history, cf. P-W in, 1743. 

4 On Poplicola, the son of the Pompeian consul of 72 B.c., cf. Miinzer, P-W vii, 
103 ff.: he is the Gellius infamously derided by Catullus (88-91). His wife Sem- 
prorua, daughter of L Atratinus, is mentioned in IG ii\ 866 and other inscriptions. 
The admiral Atratinus served in Sicily in 36 B.c., sent by Antonius ; for his coins, 
BMC , R. Rep. 11, 501; 515 f.; above, p. 231. An inscription from Hypata in 
Thessaly describes him as tt peer fie vrav kui dvriaTparriyov (ILS 9461). He was a 
Calpurmus Bestia by birth. It is not quite certain that his adoptive parent was 
descended from noble Sempronu Atratini. 5 Dio, 51, 2, 5. 

0 Crassus, grandson of M. Crassus (cos. 70 b.c.), with Sex. Pompeius and then 
with Antonius (Dio 51,4, 3). M. Octavius, admiral at Actium (Plutarch, Antonius 
65), perhaps a son of the consul of 76 b.c.: note M. Octavius as a Pompeian 
admiral in 49 and 48 b.c. (Caesar, BC 3, 5, 3, &c.). The mysterious Metellus was 
saved by his son after Actium (Appian, BC 4, 42, 175 ff). L. Pinarius Scarpus, the 
nephew of Caesar the Dictator, is difficult to classify: on him, cf. F. Miinzer, 
Hermes lxxi (1936), 229; above, p. 128. 



270 AN TONI US IN THE EAST 

were nobiles , yet this was a revolutionary period prizing and re¬ 
warding its own children—vigour and talent, not ancestral imagines 
and dead consuls. Hence no little doubt whether the motley party 
of Antonius with a variegated past, Caesarian, Pompeian and 
Republican, bound by personal loyalty or family ties rather than 
by a programme and a cause, would stand the strain of war. 

The clash was now imminent, with aggression coming from the 
West, from Octavianus, but not upon an innocent and unsuspect¬ 
ing ally. Both sides were preparing. The cause—or rather the 
pretext—was the policy which had been adopted by Antonius 
in the East and the sinister intentions thence deduced and 
made public by Octavianus and his band of unscrupulous and 
clear-headed patriots. The territorial dispositions of 37-36 b.c., 
including the augmentation of the kingdom of Egypt, passed with¬ 
out repercussion in Rome or upon Roman sentiment. Nor did 
any outcry of indignant patriotism at once denounce the strange 
pageantry that Alexandria witnessed in 34 b.c. when Antonius 
returned from the conquest of Armenia. 1 The Roman general 
celebrated a kind of triumph, in which Artavasdes, the dethroned 
Armenian, was led in golden chains to pay homage to Cleopatra. 
That was not all. Another ceremony was staged in the gymnasium. 
Antonius proclaimed Ptolemy Caesar true son of the Dictator 
and ruler in conjunction with Cleopatra, who was to be ‘Queen of 
Kings’ over the eastern dependencies. Titles of kingdoms, not all 
of them in the power or gift of Antonius, were also bestowed upon 
the three children whom Cleopatra had borne him. Hostile pro¬ 
paganda has so far magnified and distorted these celebrations that 
accuracy of fact and detail cannot be recovered: the resplendent 
donations, whatever they were, made no difference at all to pro¬ 
vincial administration in the East. Yet even now Antonius’ acts 
and dispositions were not immediately exploited by his enemies 
at Rome. The time was not quite ripe. 

The official Roman version of the cause of the War of Actium 
is quite simple, consistent and suspect—a just war, fought in 
defence of freedom and peace against a foreign enemy: a degenerate 
Roman was striving to subvert the liberties of the Roman People, 
to subjugate Italy and the West under the rule of an oriental queen. 
An expedient and salutary belief. Octavianus was in reality the 
aggressor, his war was preceded by a coup d'etat : Antonius had the 

1 Plutarch (Antonius 54) and Dio (49, 41, 1 ff.) are lavish of detail. It is strange 
that neither Velleius (2, 82, 2 f.) nor Livy (at least to judge by Per. 131) fully 
exploited this attractive theme. They had no reason to spare Antonius. 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 271 

consuls and the constitution on his side. 1 It was therefore 
necessary to demonstrate that Antonius was ‘morally' in the wrong 
and ‘morally' the aggressor. The situation and the phraseology 
recur in the history of war and politics whenever there is a public 
opinion worth persuading or deceiving. 

The version of the victors is palpably fraudulent; the truth 
cannot be disinterred, for it has been doubly buried, in erotic 
romance as well as in political mythology. Of the facts, there is 
and was no authentic record; even if there were, it would be 
necessary further to speculate upon the policy and intentions of 
Antonius, the domination which Cleopatra had achieved over 
him and the nature of her own ambitions. A fabricated con¬ 
catenation of unrealized intentions may be logical, artistic and 
persuasive, but it is not history. 

Up to a point the acts of Antonius can be recovered and 
explained. When he disposed of kingdoms and tetrarchies in 
sovran and arbitrary fashion, he did not go beyond the measure 
of a Roman proconsul. Nor did Antonius in fact resign to alien 
princes any extensive or valuable territories that had previously 
been provinces of the Roman People. The system of dependent 
kingdoms and of Roman provinces which he built up appears 
both intelligible and workable. 

Of the Roman provinces which Antonius inherited in Asia, 
three were recent acquisitions. To Pompeius Syria owed its 
annexation, Bithynia-Pontus and Cilicia an augmentation of 
territory. His dispositions, though admirable, were in some 
respects premature. A province of Cilicia was now shown to be 
superfluous. With the suppression of the Pirates vanished the 
principal (and original) reason for a provincial command in the 
south of Asia Minor. The province itself, vast in extent, and 
unprofitable to exploit, embraced difficult mountain country with 
unsubdued tribes of brigands, Isaurian, Pisidian and Cilician, 
eminently suitable to be left to the charge of a native prince. 2 
Amyntas was the man; and the small coastal tract of Cilicia 
Aspera conceded to Cleopatra did not come under direct Roman 
government until a century had elapsed. 

A large measure of decentralization was inevitable in the 
eastern lands. The agents and beneficiaries were kings or cities. 
For Rome, advantage as well as necessity; and the population 
preferred to be free from the Roman tax-gatherer. Caesar took 
from the companies of publicani the farming of the tithe of Asia ; 3 

1 Below, p. 278. 2 As Strabo (p. 671) so clearly states. 3 Dio 42, 6, 3. 



272 ANTON I US IN THE EAST 

he also removed Cyprus from Roman control and resigned it to 
the kingdom of Egypt. 1 Antonius in his consulate decreed the 
liberation of Crete ; 2 and his grant of the Roman franchise to the 
whole of Sicily might appear to portend the coming abolition of 
another Roman province. 3 The Triumvir pursued the same 
policy, to its logical end. The province of Cilicia was broken up 
entirely. Kings in the place of proconsuls and publicani meant 
order, content and economy—they supplied levies, gifts and 
tribute to the rulers of Rome. 

The Empire of the Roman People was large, dangerously 
large. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul brought its bounds to the Eng¬ 
lish Channel and the river Rhine and thereby created new 
problems. The remainder of the northern frontier clamoured to 
be regulated, as Caesar himself had probably seen, by fresh 
conquests in the Balkans and in lllyricum, as far as the Danube. 
Only then and only thus could the Empire be made solid, co¬ 
herent and secure. In the West municipal self-government was 
already advancing rapidly in Gaul and in Spain; elsewhere, how¬ 
ever, the burden of administration would impose a severe strain 
upon the Roman People. If the Roman oligarchy was to survive as 
a governing class it would have to abate its ambitions and narrow 
the area c:f its rule. Rome could not deal with the East as well 
as the West. The East was fundamentally different, possessing 
its own traditions of language, habit and rule. The dependent 
kings were already there: let them remain, the instruments of 
Roman domination. Not their strength, but their weakness, 
fomented danger and embarrassment to Rome. 

A revived Egypt might likewise play its part in the Roman 
economy of empire. It was doubly necessary, now' that Rome 
elsewhere in the East had undertaken a fresh commitment—a 
new province, Armenia, with a new frontier facing the Caucasus 
and the dependent kingdom of Media. Since the Punic Wars the 
new imperial pow r er of Rome, from suspicion and fear, had 
exploited the rivalries and sapped the strength of the Hellenistic 
monarchies. Rome spread confusion over all the East and in the 
end brought on herself wars foreign and civil. To the population 
of the eastern lands the direct rule of Rome was distasteful and 
oppressive, to the Roman State a cause of disintegration by 
reason of the military ambition of the proconsuls and the extor¬ 
tions of the knights. The empire, and especially the empire in 
the East, had been the ruin of the Republic. 

1 Dio 42, 35, 5. 2 Phil. 2, 97. 


3 Ad Att. 14, 12,1. 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 273 

Egypt itself, however much augmented, could never be a 
menace to the empire of Rome. Ever since Rome had known 
that kingdom its defences were weak, its monarchs impotent or 
ridiculous. Pompeius or Caesar might have annexed: they wisely 
preferred to preserve the rich land from spoliation and ruin by 
Roman financiers. Egypt was clearly not suited to be converted 
into a Roman province: it must remain an ally or an appanage of 
the ruler of Rome. Even if the old dynasty lapsed, the monarchy 
would subsist in Egypt. 

Antonius’ dispositions and Antonius’ vassal rulers were re¬ 
tained almost wholly by the victorious rival, save that in Egypt he 
changed the dynasty and substituted his own person for the 
Ptolemies. Caesar Augustus was therefore at the same time a 
magistrate at Rome and a king in Egypt. But that does not prove 
the substantial identity of his policy with that of Antonius. There 
was Cleopatra. Antonius was not the King of Egypt, 1 but when 
he abode there as consort of Egypt’s Queen, the father of her 
children who were crowned kings and queens, his dual role as 
Roman proconsul and Hellenistic dynast was ambiguous, dis¬ 
quieting and vulnerable. Credence might be given to the most 
alarming accounts of his ulterior ambitions. 

Was it the design of Marcus Antonius to rule as a Hellenistic 
monarch either over a separate kingdom or over the whole world ? 
Again the argument is from intentions—intentions which can 
hardly have been as apparent to Antonius’ Republican followers 
(a nephew and a grandson of Cato were still with him) as they were 
to Octavianus’ agents and to subsequent historians. It might be 
represented that Antonius was making provision for the present, 
not for a long future, for the East but not for Italy and the West 
as well. 2 To absolute monarchy belonged divine honours in the 
East—but not to monarchy alone: in any representative of power 
it was natural and normal. Had the eastern lands instead of the 
western fallen by partition to Octavianus, his policy would hardly 
have differed from that of Antonius. The first man in Rome, 
when controlling the East, could not evade, even if he wished, 
the rank and attributes of a king or a god. Years before, in the 
company of his Roman wife, Antonius had been hailed as the 
god Dionysus incarnate. 3 

1 W. W. Tarn, CAM x, Si. The rulers of Egypt were Cleopatra and her eldest 
son, Ptolemy Caesar (alleged son of the Dictator, but probably not, of. J. Carco- 
pino, Ann. dc I'ftcolv des Mantes & tildes de Garni I (1937), 37 ff.). 

1 Sec the just remarks of Levi, Ottaviano Ca popart e 11, 152: Antonius was not 
fiacriAevs. 3 W. W. Tarn, JRS xxii (1932), 149 ff. 



274 ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 

When he dwelt at Athens with Octavia, Antemius’ behaviour 
might be construed as deference to Hellenistic susceptibilities 
and politic advertisement. With Cleopatra it was different: she 
was a goddess as well as a queen in her own right. The assump¬ 
tion of divinity presented a more serious aspect—and perhaps a 
genuine religious content. Dionysus-Osiris was the consort of 
Isis. But in this matter exaggeration and credulity have run riot. 
When Antonius met Cleopatra at Tarsus, it was Aphrodite meet¬ 
ing Dionysus, for the blessing of Asia, so one account goes; 1 
and their union has been represented as a ‘sacred marriage’. 2 

A flagrant anachronism. That ‘ritual marriage’, though fertile 
with twin offspring, lapsed after a winter, leaving no political 
consequences. By 33 b.c., however, the ambition of Antonius 
might have moved farther in this direction. He had not been 
in Rome for six years: had his allegiance and his ideas swerved 
from Rome under the influence of Cleopatra? If Antonius be 
denied a complete monarchic policy of his own, it does not follow 
that he was merely a tool in the hands of Cleopatra, beguiled by her 
beauty or dominated by her intellect. His position was awkward 
—if he did not placate the Queen of Egypt he would have to 
depose her. Yet he was quite able to repel her insistent attempts 
to augment her kingdom at the expense of Judaea. There is no 
sign of infatuation here—if infatuation there was at all. Antonius 
the enslaved sensualist belongs to popular and edifying literature. 
Cleopatra was neither young nor beautiful. 3 But there are more 
insistent and more dangerous forms of domination—he may have 
succumbed to the power of her imagination and her understanding. 
Yet that is not proved. Antonius was compelled to stand by Cleo¬ 
patra to the end by honour and by principle as well as by the 
necessities of war. Like Caesar, he never deserted his friends or 
his allies. Nobler qualities, not the basest, were his ruin. 

Rome, it has been claimed, feared Cleopatra but did not fear 
Antonius: she was planning a war of revenge that was to array all 
the East against Rome, establish herself as empress of the world 
at Rome and inaugurate a new universal kingdom. 4 In this deep 
design Antonius was but her dupe and her agent. 

Of the ability of Cleopatra there is no doubt: her importance 
in history, apart from literature and legend, is another matter. It 

1 Plutarch, Antonius 26: cos rj 'AfipoSlrr] Kojpa^oi napa tov Aiovvoov cV* ayadaj 
tt}$ > AoLas. 

1 M. A. Levi, Ottavia.no Capoparte n, 103 f.; 144. 

3 Plutarch, Antonius 57. 

4 W. W. Tam, JRS xxn (1932), 141; CAH x, 82 f. 



ANTONIUS IN THE EAST 275 

is not certain that her ambition was greater than this, to secure 
and augment her Ptolemaic kingdom under the protection of 
Rome. The clue is to be found in the character of the War 
of Actium—as it was designed and contrived by the party of 
Octavianus. It was not a war for domination against Antonius— 
Antonius must not be mentioned. To secure Roman sanction 
and emotional support for the enterprise it was necessary to 
invent a foreign danger that menaced everything that was Roman, 
as Antonius himself assuredly did not. 1 The propaganda of 
Octavianus magnified Cleopatra beyond all measure and decency. 
To ruin Antonius it was not enough that she should be a siren: 
she must be made a Fury—‘fatale monstrum’. 2 

That was the point where Antonius was most vulnerable, 
Roman sentiment most easily to be worked and swayed. Years 
before, Cleopatra was of no moment whatsoever in the policy of 
Caesar the Dictator, but merely a brief chapter in his amours, 
comparable to Eunoe the wife of the prince of Mauretania ; 3 nor 
was the foreign woman now much more than an accident in the 
contest, inevitable without her, between the two Caesarian 
leaders. Failing Cleopatra and her children, Octavianus would 
have been reduced to inferior expedients, mere detestation of 
eastern monarchs and prejudice against the alien allies of his 
rival—the low-born Amyntas, the brutal Herod and the pre¬ 
sumptuous Pvthodorus. 

Created belief turned the scale of history. The policy and 
ambitions of Antonius or of Cleopatra were not the true cause of 
the War of Actium; 4 they were a pretext in the strife for power, 
the magnificent lie upon which was built the supremacy of 
Caesar's heir and the resurgent nation of Italy. Yet, for all that, 
the contest soon assumed the august and solemn form of a war of 
ideas and a war between East and West. Antonius and Cleopatra 
seem merely pawns in the game of destiny. 5 The weapon forged 
to destroy Antonius changed the shape of the whole world. 

1 Tarn ( CAH x, 76) concedes that Antonius himself was not a danger to Rome. 

2 Horace, Odes 1, 37, 21. 

3 The unimportance of Cleopatra in relation to Caesar has been firmly argued by 
Carcopino, Ann. de Vficole des Hautes Etudes de Gand 1 (1937), 37 ff. 

4 Cf. especially J. Kromayer, Hermes xxxm (1898), 50; A. E. Glauning, Die 
Anhangerschaft des Antonius und des Octavian (Diss. Leipzig, 1936), 31 ff. 

5 Plutarch, Antonius 56: cSet yap els Kalaapa irdvra TrepieXdclv. 



XX. TOT A ITALIA 


T HE year 33 b.c. opened with Octavianus as consul for the 
second time: with its close, the triumviral powers were to 
expire. The rivals manoeuvred for position: of compromise, no 
act or thought. Octavianus moved first. Early in the year he 
delivered a speech before the Senate, criticizing the acts of 
Antonius in the East. 1 Antonius replied with a manifesto. He 
took his stand upon legality and upon the plighted word of 
covenants, which was a mistake. Antonius complained that he had 
been excluded from raising recruits in Italy; that his own men 
had been passed over in the allotment of lands; that Octavianus 
had deposed in arbitrary fashion a colleague in the Triumvirate. 2 
Antonius had already professed readiness to lay down office and 
join in restoring the Republic. 3 

Octavianus evaded the charge of breach of contract. Preferring 
a topic with moral and emotional appeal, he turned the weight of 
his attack upon Antonius’ alliance with the Queen of Egypt. 
Then irony: the grandiose conquests of Antonius would surely 
be more than enough to provide bounties or lands for the armies 
of the East. 4 

Antonius consigned the statement of his acta and the demand 
for their ratification to a document which he dispatched before 
the end of the year to the consuls designate, Cn. Domitius Aheno- 
barbus and C. Sosius, his trusted adherents. The contents of 
this missive might be guessed: it was to be imparted to the Senate 
on the first day of the new year. 

So far official documents and public manifestoes, of which there 
had been a dearth in the last few years. Lampoon and abuse 
had likewise been silent under the rule of the Triumvirs. Now 
came a sudden revival, heralded by the private correspondence 
of the dynasts, frank, free and acrimonious -and designed for 
publicity. The old themes, familiar from reciprocal invective at 
the time of Octavianus’ first essay in armed violence and revived 
during the War of Perusia, were intensified—obscure ancestry, 

1 The order of events, not always clearly indicated by Dio and Plutarch, the 
only full sources for the years 33 and 32 b.c:., has been satisfactorily established 
by Kromayer, Hermes xxxm (1898), 37 ff. 

2 Dio 50, 1, 3 ff.; Plutarch, Antonius 55. 

3 Dio 49, 41, 6. 4 lb. 50, 1, 4; Plutarch, Antonius 55. 



TOT A ITALTA 277 

family scandal, and the private vices of lust, cruelty and cowardice. 1 
Above all Octavianus attacked Antonius’ devotion to drink—and 
to Cleopatra. Antonius retorted—it was nothing new, but had 
begun nine years ago: Cleopatra was his wife. As for Octavianus, 
what about Salvia Titisenia, Rufilla, Tertulla and Terentilla? 2 
Against the other charge he composed an unedifying tract 
entitled De sua ebrietate. 3 

Poets and pamphleteers took the field with alacrity. Antonius 
asserted that Ptolemy Caesar was the true heir as well as authen¬ 
tic son of the Dictator. Octavianus put up the Caesarian agent 
Oppius to disprove paternity. 4 The Republican Messalla turned 
his eloquence to political advantage ; 5 he was soon to be requited 
with the consulate which Antonius should have held. Republican 
freedom of speech now revelled in a brief renascence—as though 
it were not fettered to the policy of a military despot. 

To liberty itself the Republic was now recalled, bewildered and 
unfamiliar, from the arbitrary rule of the Triumvirate. Since the 
time when the entry into office of new consuls last portended a 
change in politics a whole age seemed to have elapsed, and most 
of the principal actors were dead: in fact, Sosius and Domitius 
were only eleven years from Hirtius and Pansa. Then the new 
year had been eagerly awaited, for it brought a chance to secure 
constitutional sanction for the young adventurer. Once again 
Octavianus lacked standing before the law, for the triumviral 
powers had come to an end. 6 He was not dismayed: he took no 

1 For the details, K. Scott, Mem . Am. Ac. Rome xi (1933), 7 ff. 

2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 69: ‘quid te mutavit, quod reginam ineo? uxor mea est. 
nunc coepi an abhinc annos novem ? tu deinde solam Drusillarn inis? ita valcas uti 
tu, hanc epistolam cum leges, non inieris Tertullam aut Terentillam aut Rufillam aut 
Salviam Titiseniam automnes. an refert, ubi et in qua arrigas?’ It is evident that 
this famous fragment, matching in frankness an early product of Octavianus 
(cf. Martial 11, 20) does not furnish either a satisfactory definition of the word 
‘uxor’ or a clear solution of problems concerning the ‘marriage’ of Antonius. The 
women alluded to may be the wives of certain associates of Octavianus—at least 
Terentilla is presumably Terentia, the wife of Maecenas, not unknown to subse¬ 
quent scandal. 

3 Pliny, NH 14, 148: ‘exiguo tempore ante proclium Actiacum id volumen 
evomuit.* Cf. M. P. Charlesworth, CQ xxvn (1933), J 7 2 ff- 

4 Suetonius, Divus Julius 52, 2. 

5 Pliny, NH 33, 50—an allegation that Antonius like an oriental monarch used 
vessels of gold for domestic and intimate purposes. Messalla w rote at least three 
pamphlets against Antonius (Charisius, GL 104, 18; 129, 7; 146, 34). 

6 The whole topic, which has provoked excessive debate, does not need to be 
discussed here. On the one hand, the Triumvirs could continue to hold their powers 
after the date fixed for their expiry, as in 37 B.c. This w r as what Antonius did in 
32 b.c. On the other, the statement and attitude of Octavianus is perfectly clear: 
he had been Triumvir for ten years ( Res Gestae 7). A master in all the arts of 

44 H 2 k 



278 TOT A ITALIA 

steps to have his position legalized. He respected the constitu¬ 
tion—and dispensed with it. When the time came, he went 
beyond Senate and People, appealing to a higher sanction, so far 
had the Roman constitution declined. 

Octavianus retired from the city. The new consuls summoned 
the Senate and took office on January ist. They did not read the 
dispatch of Antonius, which they had received late in the pre¬ 
ceding autumn. They may previously have made a compromise 
with Octavianus : r it is more likely that they were afraid to divulge 
its contents. Antonius asked to have his acta confirmed. Among 
them was the conquest of Armenia, a strong argument in his 
favour. But Armenia was outweighed by the donations of 
Antonius to Cleopatra and her children, a vulnerable point for 
hostile attack if the Senate decided to discuss the acta of Antonius 
one by one, as when Pompeius requested confirmation of his 
ordering of the provinces and kingdoms of the East. Ahenobarbus 
held back, perhaps in hope of peace. 2 Sosius took the lead and 
delivered a speech in praise of Antonius, with strong abuse of 
Octavianus; he proposed a motion of censure which was vetoed 
by a tribune. That closed the session. 

Octavianus meanwhile mustered supporters from the towns of 
Italy—Caesarian veterans, personal adherents and their armed 
bands. Returning to Rome, on his own initiative he summoned 
the Senate. He had discarded the name of Triumvir. But he 
possessed auctoritas and the armed power to back it. He entered 
the Curia, surrounded by soldiers and adherents in the garb of 
peace, with concealed weapons. Taking his place between the 
two consuls, he spoke in defence of his own policy, accusing 
Sosius and Antonius. None dared to raise a voice against the 
Caesarian leader. Octavianus then dismissed the Senate, in¬ 
structing it to assemble again on a fixed day, when he would 
supply documentary evidence against Antonius. 

The consuls in protest fled to Antonius, bearing with them the 
unread missive. They were followed by more than three hundred 
senators, Republican or Antonian. 3 

political fraud did not need to stoop to trivial and pointless deception. The sudden 
prominence of consuls and of a tribune at the beginning of 32 B.c. may be taken 
as fair proof that the Triumvirate had come to an end, legally at least. 

1 Dio 49, 41, 4 f. 

2 lb. 50, 2, 3 : o AofAiTios ovhev <f>av€pQj$, u>$ ye kcll avp.<f>opcov rroXXdjv 
Tr€ 7 T€ipap.evos , eveoxpojoev . Perhaps he was approached by eminent ex-Republicans 
in the Caesarian party. 

3 More than seven hundred senators fought on Octavianus’ side in the War of 
Actium (Res Gestae 25): the total strength of the Senate was over a thousand. 



TOT A ITALIA 279 

Octavianus alleged that he suffered them to depart freely and 
openly. 1 To prevent and coerce consuls was inexpedient, the 
retirement of his enemies not unwelcome. Even now, the Senate 
and People were not utterly to be despised: the consuls could be 
held guilty of a grave misdemeanour in leaving Italy without 
sanction. 2 In place of Sosius and Ahenobarbus he appointed 
two nobles, M. Valerius, a kinsman of Messalla Corvinus, and 
F. Cornelius Cinna, grandson of Sulla’s enemy. In the next 
year he would be consul with Corvinus, instead of Antonins: one 
of the stiffecti was to be Cn. Pompeius, a great-grandson of Sulla. 
Historic names might convey the guarantee, or at least advertise 
the show, of support from the Roman aristocracy. 3 

For the moment violence had given Octavianus an insecure 
control of Rome and Italy. But violence was not enough: he 
still lacked the moral justification for war, and the moral support 
of the Roman People. The charges and counter-charges in the 
dispute of the dynasts, whether legal or personal, w r erc no novelty 
to a generation that could recall the misrepresentation and invec¬ 
tive of Republican politics—to say nothing of the recent ‘constitu¬ 
tional’ crisis of the consulate of Antonins and the War of Mutina. 
A more brutal stimulant was required. 

Octavianus was in a very difficult position. The secession of 
avowed enemies by no means left a Senate unreservedly and 
reliably loyal—it was packed with the timid and the time-serving, 
ready to turn against him if they dared: it was a bad sign that 
more than three hundred senators had decided to join Antonius, 
clear evidence of something more than desperate loyalty or invin¬ 
cible stupidity. Octavianus professed to have resigned the office 
of Triumvir, but retained the power, as was apparent, not only to 
Antonius, but to other contemporaries—for Antonius, who, more 
honest, still employed the name, again offered to give up his 
powers, as he had two years before. 4 Furthermore, if the law and 
the constitution still mattered, Antonius had a valid plea—both 

1 Dio 50, 2, 7. 

1 Antiquarians and constitutional purists could recall the situation in 49 B.C., 
when the Pompeian consuls departed from Rome without securing a lex curiata. 

3 This is a pure conjecture, based on the presence of the names M. Valerius, 
L. Cornelius and Cn. Pompeius on the Fasti. These consuls might have been 
designated for office at an earlier date. L. Cornelius Cinna (pr . 44 b.c.) was the 
husband of Pompeia, daughter of Pompeius Magnus: but the consul of 32 may be 
his son by an earlier marriage ( PIR Z , C 1338). Cn. Pompeius was the son of 
Q. Pompeius Rufus (tr. pi. 52 n.c\), who was the offspring of the marriage between 
the son of Q. Pompeius Rufus (cos. 88 b.c.) and Cornelia, the daughter of Sulla. 

4 Dio 50, 7, 1. 



280 TOT A ITALIA 

consuls were on his side. Antonius stood on the defensive—and 
therefore, it might be represented, for peace. For war his pres¬ 
tige and his power were enormous. It is in no way evident that 
the mishap in Media had ruined his reputation, while the material 
damage was compensated by subsequent successes and by the 
ordering of the north-eastern frontier. Octavianus had to wait 
and hope for the best. His enemy would soon have to make a 
ruinous decision. 

Antonius was at Ephesus; his army had recently been raised 
to the imposing total of thirty legions 1 and a vast fleet was dis¬ 
posed along the coasts. He was confident and ready for the 
struggle—but might not open it yet. Here the two consuls met 
him in the spring, bringing with them the semblance of a Senate. 
Bitter debate ensued among the party leaders, sharpened by 
personal enmities and rivalries. 

In a civil war fleets and legions are not the most important 
things. Under what name and plea was the contest to be fought ? 
For Rome, for the consuls and the Republic against the domina¬ 
tion of Octavianus, or for Egypt and Egypt’s Queen ? Ahcnobar- 
bus urged that Cleopatra be sent back to Egypt. Canidius the 
marshal dissented, pointing to the men, the money and the ships 
that Cleopatra provided for the war. 2 Canidius prevailed: it was 
alleged that he had been bribed. The compromising ally re¬ 
mained. 

In early summer Antonius passed from Ephesus to Samos 
and from Samos to Athens. Now it might seem that Cleopatra 
had finally triumphed. Antonius formally divorced Octavia. 
That act, denoting the rupture of his amicitia with Octavianus, 
was the equivalent of a declaration of war; and war would have 
ensued, Cleopatra or no Cleopatra. But the Queen was there: 
Antonius stood as her ally, whatever the nature of the tic that 
bound them. 3 

Antonius had presumed too much upon the loyalty of a party 
that was united not by principle or by a cause but by personal 
allegiance. Generous but careless, in the past he had not been 

1 BMC , R. Rep. 11, 526 ft. 2 Plutarch, Antonius 56. 

1 On the question of the ‘marriage’ of Antonius, for a discussion see Rice Holmes, 
The Architect of the Roman Empire 1, 227 ft.; M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capoparte II, 
139 ft. Both Holmes and Levi seem to be against Kromayer’s thesis of a marriage 
in 37 36 ii.c. Difficulties of formulation (like the meaning of the word ‘uxor’) 
complicate the question—which is perhaps in itself not of prime importance. 
Antonius, being a Roman citizen, could not at any time contract a legally valid 
marriage with a foreign woman. 



TOTA ITALIA 281 

able to retain all his partisans or prevent their adhesion to 
Octavianus. Nor were Republicans and Pompeians as amenable 
to discipline as were the chief men of the rival Caesarian faction. 
Ruinous symptoms were soon apparent, heralding the break-up 
of the Antonian party. Cleopatra, however, was not the prime 
cause of the trouble. 

Next to Antonius stood the Republican Ahenobarbus and the 
old Caesarian Plancus, each with a following of his own. Between 
them was no confidence, but bitter enmity, causing a feud with 
subsequent repercussions. 1 Ahenobarbus was steadfast all through 
against the blandishments of Cleopatra, refusing even to salute 
her with the title of ‘Queen’: 2 Republican principle, or rather 
family tradition and the prospects of his own son, made him in¬ 
sist that the party of Antonius should be Roman, not regal. Not 
so Munatius Plancus, who set himself to win the favour of Cleo¬ 
patra, pronounced her the winner in a famed if not fabulous wager 
with Antonius, and displayed his versatile talents prominently at 
court masques in Alexandria. 3 

Antonius stood by Cleopatra. Ahenobarbus hated the Queen 
and was averse from war. Yet it was not Ahenobarbus who ran 
away, but Plancus. Accompanied by his nephew Titius, he de¬ 
serted and fled to Rome. 4 Plancus had never vet been wrong 
in his estimate of a delicate political crisis. The effect must have 
been tremendous, alike in Rome and in the camp of Antonius. 

Yet he still kept in his company men of principle, distinction 
and ability, old Caesarian partisans, Republicans, Pompeians. 
Certain allies were now dead; others, estranged by absence or 
by the diplomatic arts of the new master of Italy, had changed 
their allegiance on a calculation of interest, or preferred to lapse, 
if they could, into a safe and inglorious neutrality. Yet Antonius 
could count upon tried military men like Sosius and Canidius. 

No names are recorded in the company of Plancus and Titius. 
Neither sustained loyalty to Antonius nor rapid desertion were 

1 Suetonius, Nero 4 (a clash between Ahenobarbus’ son and Plancus in 22 b.c.). 

2 Velleius 2, 84, 2. The city of Domitiopolis, in Cleopatra’s portion of Cilicia 
Aspera, was founded, or at least named, in his honour: this conjecture is confirmed 
by the existence of a city called Titiopolis in the same region (after M. Titius). 

3 Pliny NH 9, 121 ; Macrobius 3, 17, 16 (the wager about the pearl). Velleius 
(2, 83, 1 f.) presents a vivid picture of Plancus’ performance in the role of Glaucus. 

4 Plutarch, Antonius 58; Dio 50, 3, 1 If.; Velleius 2, 83. Dio is not very explicit 
about the cause of their desertion— npooKpavaavres tl avroj ckzlvol rj Kai rfj 
KAeoTTCLTpa tl dxOe(jdivr€<: (50, 3, 2). Velleius, no safe guide about Plancus at any 
time, alleges that this corrupt character, ‘in omnia et omnibus venalis’, had been 
detected in peculation by Antonius. 



282 TOT A ITALIA 

qualities which men always cared afterwards to remember and 
perpetuate. The Pompeians Saturninus and Arruntius had turned 
Caesarian by now; and certain consular diplomats or diploma¬ 
tic marshals, whose political judgement was sharper than their 
sense of personal obligation, may have departed in the company, or 
after the example, of Plancus. Complete silence envelops the dis¬ 
creet Cocceii; and there is no sign when Atratinus and Fonteius 
changed sides. A number of the younger nobiles remained, how¬ 
ever, some to the very end. 

Most significant is the strong Republican following of one 
already denounced as an enemy of Rome, as a champion of 
oriental despotism. Bib ulus, the proconsul of Syria, died in this 
year, but the rest of the Catonian faction under Ahenobarbus 
still stood firm. Had Ahenobarbus required a pretext for deser¬ 
tion, it lay to hand in Antonius’ refusal to dismiss Cleopatra. 
But the Antonian party was already disintegrating. Loyalty 
would not last for ever in the face of evidence like the defection 
of Plancus and Titius. 

Well primed with the secrets of Antonius, the renegades brought 
a precious gift, so it is alleged - news of the documentary evidence 
that Octavianus so urgently required. They told him that the 
last will and testament of Antonius reposed in the custody of the 
Vestal Virgins. Neither the attack upon the policy of Antonius in 
the East, nor the indignation fomented about the divorce of 
Octavia, had served his purpose adequately. Men could see that 
divorce, like marriage, was an act of high politics. Now came an 
opportune discovery—so opportune that forgery might be sus¬ 
pected, though the provisions of the will do not perhaps utterly 
pass belief. 1 Octavianus extorted the document from the Vestal 
Virgins and read it out to the Senate of Rome. Among other 
things, Antonius reiterated as authentic the parentage of Ptolemy 
Caesar, bequeathed legacies to the children of Cleopatra and 
directed that, when he died, he should be buried beside her in 
Alexandria. 2 

The signal was given for a renewed attack. Calvisius, the 
Caesarian soldier, adopting with some precipitance the unfamiliar 
role of a champion of polite letters, alleged among other enormi- 

1 The truth of the matter is lost for ever. Octavianus had the first view of the 
document, alone— Kai Trpujrov p,ev aurd? ihia ra yeypa/A/xcVa biriAOe Kai irapecrq- 
pLrfvaro tottov<; ru'd? evKarrjyopijTovs (Plutarch, Antonius 58). The hypothesis of 
forgery, at least partial, should not summarily be dismissed. It is a question not of 
scruples but of expedience—how far was forgery necessary? and how easily could 
forgery be detected? 2 Dio 50, 3,5. 



TOT A ITALIA 283 

ties that Antonius had abruptly left a court of law in the middle 
of a speech by Furnius, the most eloquent of the Romans, 
because Cleopatra was passing by in her litter, that he had be¬ 
stowed upon his paramour the whole library of Pergamum, no 
less than two hundred thousand volumes. 1 The loyal efforts of 
Calvisius were not accorded general credence ; and touching the 
testament of Antonius, many thought it atrocious that a man 
should be impugned in his lifetime for posthumous dispositions. 
Already a senator of unusual independence had openly derided 
the revelations of the renegade Plancus. 2 

None the less the will w>as held genuine, and did not fail in its 
working, at least on some orders of the population, for it confirmed 
allegations already current and designed to fill the middle class 
w r ith horror and anger. 3 The friends of Antonius w r ere baffled, 
unable to defend him openly. Wild rumours pervaded Rome and 
Italy. Not merely that Antonius and Cleopatra designed to 
conquer the West—Antonius would surrender the city of Rome 
to the Queen of Egypt and transfer the capital to Alexandria. 4 
Her favourite oath, it w r as even stated (and has since been 
believed), was ‘so may 1 deliver my edicts upon the Capitol’. 5 
No Roman however degenerate could have descended to such 
treason in his right mind. It was therefore solemnly asseverated 
that Antonius was the victim of sorcery. 0 

Antonius for his part made no move yet. Not merely because 
Octavianus had picked the quarrel—to invade Italy whth Cleo¬ 
patra in his company would alienate sympathy and confirm the 
worst allegations of his enemies. Otherwise the situation appeared 
favourable: he was blamed for not exploiting the given advan¬ 
tage before his enemy created by propaganda and intimidation 
a united front. 7 

All Italy was in confusion. 8 Antonius' agents distributed lavish 
bribes among the civil population and the soldiery. Octavianus 

1 Plutarch, Antonius 58. 

2 Velleius 2, 83, 3. It was C. Coponius, an ex-Pompeian and one of the pro¬ 
scribed (P-W iv, 1215), of a reputable family of Tibur (Cicero, Pro Balbo 53; ILS 
3700) and hostile to Plancus. 

3 If Dio is to be believed (50, 4, 2). 'The publication of the will is not given so 
much importance and effect by Plutarch (Antonius 58 f.), while Velleius omits this 
attractive subject altogether. 

4 Dio 50, 4, 1: 8t* ovv ravra dyavaKTrjoai’Te ? fTrioTevaav on /cat rdAAa ra 
dpi)Xovp.€va dXrjOrj €trj y tout ’ ccrrtc ort, dv Kparyjarj, njv re ttoXlv ocfxjjv rfj KXto- 
Trdrpa xapieirai /rat to /rparo? fV rrjv Alyvirrav p.€TaOija€L. 

5 lb. 5, 4. 6 lb. 5, 3 ; Plutarch, Antonius 60. 

7 Plutarch, Antonius 58. 

8 Valuable evidence in Dio 50, to, 3 ff.; Plutarch, Antonius 58. 



284 TOT A ITALIA 

was compelled to secure the loyalty of his legions by paying a 
donative. In desperate straits for money, he imposed new taxa¬ 
tion of unprecedented severity—the fourth part of an individual’s 
annual income was exacted. Riots broke out; and there was 
widespread incendiarism. Freedmen, recalcitrant under taxation, 
were especially blamed for the trouble and heavily punished. 1 
Disturbances among the civil population were suppressed by 
armed force—for the soldiers had been paid. To public taxation 
was added private intimidation. Towns and wealthy individuals 
were persuaded to offer contributions for the army. The let¬ 
ters that circulated, guaranteed by the seal of the sphinx or by 
Maecenas’ frog, were imperative and terrifying. 2 

‘Quo, quo scelesti ruitis?’ 3 Another, yet another, criminal war 
between citizens was being forced by mad ambition upon the 
Roman People. In this atmosphere of terror and alarm Octavia- 
nus resolved to secure national sanction for his arbitrary power 
and a national mandate to save Rome from the menace of the 
East. A kind of plebiscite was organized, in the form of an oath 
of personal allegiance. 

‘All Italy of its own accord swore an oath of allegiance to me 
and chose me as its leader in the war which 1 won at Actium.’ 4 
So Augustus wrote in the majestic memorial of his own life and 
deeds. When an official document records voluntary manifesta¬ 
tions of popular sentiment under a despotic government, a cer¬ 
tain suspension of belief may safely be recommended. Nor is it 
to be fancied that all the land rose as one man in patriotic ardour, 
clamouring for a crusade against the foreign enemy. Yet, on the 
other hand, the united front was not achieved merely through 
intimidation. Of the manner in which the measure was carried 
out there stands no record at all. The oath of allegiance was 
perhaps not a single act, ordered by one decree of the Caesarian 
leader and executed simultaneously over all Italy, but rather the 
culmination in the summer of a series of local agitations, which, 
though far from unconcerted, presented a certain appearance 
of spontaneity. This fair show' of a true vote was enhanced 

1 Dio 50, 10, 4. 

2 Pliny, NH 37, to: 'quippe etiam Macccnatis rana per collationes pecuniarum 
in magno terrore erat. Augustus postea ad evitanda convicia sphingis Alexandri 
Magni imagine signavit.’ The inscr. ILS 5531 (lgmmm) mav attest contribu¬ 
tions for the war: note the phrase ‘in commeatum legionibus’. 

3 Horace, Epodcs 1, 7, 1. 

4 Res Gestae 25: ‘iuravit in mea ver[ba] tota | Italia spontc sua et me be[IIi] 
quo vici ad Actium ducem depoposcit.’ 



TOT A ITALIA 285 

by the honourable treatment of Bononia, a town bound by especial 
ties of loyalty to Antonius. 1 The ostentatious exemption of 
Bononia from the necessity of taking the oath manifested the 
solidarity of the rest of Italy and riveted the shackles of servitude. 
Bononia, or any recalcitrant communities, would pay the price in 
confiscation of their lands when the war was over. 2 

In the constitutional crisis of the year 32, the consuls and a 
show of legality were on the side of Antonius. An absurdity— 
the Roman constitution was manifestly inadequate if it was the 
instrument of Rome’s enemy. And so Octavianus, like Cicero 
twelve years earlier when he so eloquently justified a Catilinarian 
venture and armed treason against a consul, was able to invoke 
the plea of a ‘higher legality’. Against the degenerate organs of a 
narrow and outworn constitution he appealed to the voice and 
sentiments of the true Roman People—not the corrupt plebs or 
the packed and disreputable Senate of the city, but all Italy. 

The phrase was familiar from recent history, whereas idea and 
practice were older still. Long ago the nobles of Rome, not least the 
dynastic house of the patrician Claudii,had enhanced their power 
by inducing men of repute and substance in the Italian communi¬ 
ties to contract ties of personal allegiance and mutual support. 3 
When a Claudian faction encouraged a revolutionary agitation at 
Rome with tribunes’ laws and the division of lands, Scipio Aemili- 
anus and his friends, championing Italy against the plebs of Rome, 
got help from Italian men of property, themselves menaced. 4 
Aid from Italy could be invoked for revolution, for reaction or 
for domination, even for all three ends at once. The tribune 
Livius Drusus, working in conservative interests and supported 
by a powerful group of nobiles , yet accused of monarchic designs, 
was the great exemplar. He was the champion, friend and patron 
of the leading men in the communities of Italy; 5 his allies took 
an oath of personal loyalty, and the towns of Italy offered public 
vows for his safety. 6 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 17, 2; Dio 50, 6, 3. Bononia was in the clientcla of the 

Antomi. 2 And some certainly did, Dio 51,4, 6. 

3 Of one of the Claudii, presumably the Censor, Suetonius (Tib. 2, 2) records 
‘Italiam per clientelas occupare temptavit.’ 

4 Appian, BC 1, 19, 78; Sallust, BJ 42, 1: ‘per socios ac nomcn Latinum.’ 
Sallust also records (ib. 40, 2) how in 109 B.c. the nobiles employed ‘homines 
nominis Latini et socios Italicos’. 

5 Plutarch, Cato minor 2 (Poppaedius). Cf. Florus 2, 5, 1: ‘totiusque Italiae 
consensu.’ Livy (Per. 71) recorded the ‘coetus coniurationesque’ of the chief men 
of Italy. 

0 Auctor dc vir. illustr. 12: ‘vota pro illo per Jtaliam publice suscepta.’ Diodorus 



286 TOT A ITALIA 

Italy then had been foreign, and the activities of Drusus 
precipitated war. But Italy, become Roman through grant of the 
franchise after the Bellum Italicum , could with the utmost pro¬ 
priety be summoned and conjured to redress the balance of 
Roman politics and to thwart the popular tribune or military 
dynast. Such at least was the plea and profession. The local gen¬ 
try, who controlled the policy of the towns, could create opinion, 
produce votes of the local senates and facilitate by money 
or by moral suasion the levying of ‘volunteer’ armies in a 
patriotic cause. Cicero’s friends used votes of the colonies and 
municipia to influence Roman opinion in favour of the exiled 
statesman. 1 Pompeius had sponsored the movement. When 
Pompeius fell ill at Naples in 50 b.c. Italian towns offered up 
prayers for his safety and passed decrees, creating a false and 
fatal opinion of the dynast’s popularity.- Cicero, again, proclaimed 
the consensus Italiae against Antonius in the War of Mutina. 1 
In vain—it did not exist. Private influence and private ties, 
casual corruption or local intimidation were not enough. Lack 
of conviction as well as lack of organization frustrated these 
partial attempts. 

The name of Italy long remained as it had begun, a geographi¬ 
cal expression. Italia was first invoked as a political and senti¬ 
mental notion against Rome b r the peoples of Italy, precisely 
the Italici , when they fought for freedom and justice in 90 B.c. 
That was the first coniuratio Italiae . Though the whole land was 
enfranchised after the Bellum Italicum , it had not coalesced in 
sentiment with the victorious city to form a nation. The Italian 
peoples did not yet regard Rome as their own capital, for the 
memory of old feuds and recent wars took long to die; and the 
true Roman in just pride disdained the general and undistinctive 
appellation of‘Italian’. Within a few years of Actium, a patriotic 
poet revolted at the mere thought that Roman soldiers, captives 
from the disaster of Crassus (and by implication of Antonius), 
could turn renegade and live in Parthia: 

milesne Crassi coniuge Barbara ? 

(37, 11) furnishes the text of an oath of allegiance to Drusus, which is significant 
though the phraseology cannot he genuine, cf. H. J. Rose, Ilarv. Th. Rev. xxx 
(1937), 165 ff.; A. v. Premerstein, ‘Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats’, 
Abh. der bayerisrhen Ak. dcr Wiss., phil.-hist. Abt., N.F. 15 (1937). 

1 Cicero, Post red. in sen. 39: cum me . . . Italia cuncta paene suis umeris re- 
portarit’; ‘Sallust’, In Ciceronem 4; Macrobius 2, 3, 5 (Vatmius’ joke). 

z Ad Att. 8, 16, 1 ; 9, 5, 3. 

3 Above, pp. 86 ff. 



TOT A ITALIA 287 

Shame that the Marsian and the Apulian could forget the sacred 
shields of Mars, the Roman name, the toga and eternal Vesta! 1 
But Horace, himself perhaps no son of Italian stock, was con¬ 
veniently oblivious of recent Italian history. The Marsi had no 
reason at all to be passionately attached to Roman gods and garb. 

Italy retained a rational distrust of the intrigues of Roman 
politicians, a firm disinclination to join in quarrels fought at her 
expense. Why should Italy sacrifice brave sons and fair lands at 
the bidding of enemies of Caesar—or of Antoniu : The Roman 
constitution might be endangered: that was a name and a decep¬ 
tion. Etruria, Picenum and the Samnite country could remem¬ 
ber their conquest by Sulla and by the Pompeii: that was a reality. 
More recently, Perusia. 

For any contest it would have been difficult enough to enlist 
Italian sentiment. Italy had no quarrel with Antonius; as for 
despotism, the threat of oriental monarchy was distant and irrele¬ 
vant when compared with the armed domination of Octavianus 
at home. Yet in some way, by propaganda, by intimidation and 
by violence, Italy was forced into a struggle which in time she 
came to believe was a national war. The contest was personal: it 
arose from the conflicting ambitions of two rivals for supreme 
power. The elder, like Pornpeius twenty years before, a great 
reputation but on the wane: 

nec reparare novas vires multumque priori 
credere lortunae: stat magni nominis umbra . 2 

The younger dynast, no longer owing everything to the name of 
Caesar, possessed strength and glory in his own right, and im¬ 
placable ambition. 

From the rivalry of the Caesarian leaders a latent opposition 
between Rome and the East, and a nationalism grotesquely en¬ 
hanced by war and revolution, by famine and <by fear, broke out 
and prevailed, imposing upon the strife for power an ideal, 
august and patriotic character. But not all at once. 

A conscious and united Italy cannot have arisen, total and 
immediate, from the plebiscite of the year 32: that act was but 
the beginning of the work that Augustus the Princeps was later 
to consummate. It is evident that the most confident as well as 
the most vocal assertions of Italian nationalism followed rather 
than preceded the War of Actium. Only then, after victory, did 
men realize to the full the terrible danger that had menaced 

1 Horace, Odes 3, 5, 5 ff. 2 Lucan, Pharsalia 1, 134L 



288 TOT A ITALIA 

Rome and Italy. The lesson was reiterated in the splendid and 
triumphant verses of national poets or in the restrained and 
lapidary language of official inscriptions. 1 

hor the present, as Italy loathed war and military despotism, 
the immediate purpose of the oath was to intimidate opposition 
and to stampede the neutrals. But the measure was much more 
than a device invented to overcome a temporary crisis, merely 
temporary in use and validity; and the power conferred by the 
consent of lota Italia far surpassed any attempts of earlier politi¬ 
cians to build up a following among the propertied classes of 
Italy. The oath embraced all orders of society and attached a 
whole people to the clientela of a party-leader, as clients to a 
patron, as soldiers to an imperator . It resembled also the solemn 
pledge given by the Senate to Caesar the Dictator in the last 
month of his life, or the oath taken at Tibur to the consul Anto- 
nius in a public emergency. 2 

The oath was personal in character, with concept and phrasing 
not beyond the reach of valid conjecture. 3 Of the Roman State, 
of Senate and People, no word. The oath of allegiance bound 
followers to a political leader in a private quarrel against his 
enemies, his inimici , not the enemies of the State ( hostes ); and as 
such the oath could never change or lapse. By whatever name 
known or public title honoured, the last of the monarchic faction- 
leaders based his rule on personal allegiance. Dux partium 
became princeps civitatis. 4 

Nor is surmise entirely vain about the manner in which the 


1 Horace, Epodes 9; Odes 1, 37. Virgil, Aen. 8, 671 ff.; Propertius 3, 11, 29 ff.; 
4, 6, 13 ff. The various Augustan calendars celebrate August 1st, the date of the 
capture of Alexandria ‘quod eo die imp. Caesar divi f. rem pubiicam tristissimo 
periculo Jiberavit’ (J. Gage, Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Paris, 1935), 175). 

2 Nicolaus, Vita Caesaris 22, 80; Suetonius, Divus Julius 84, 2 and 86, 1 ; 
Appian, BC 2, 144, 600 ff. (Caesar); 3,46, 188 (Antonius). See the interpretation 
of Premerstein, Vom Werden and Wesen des Prinzipats , 32 ff. 

3 On the character, form and true significance of the oath, see, above all, Pre- 
merstcin, o.r., 26 ff., csp. 36 ff. For the words and formulation he acutely invokes 
four documents: the oath of the Paphlagonians taken at Gangra in the name of 
Augustus after the annexation of that region (OCAS' 532 = JLS 878t), an oath 
of allegiance probably to Caligula (CIL xi, 5998a: Sestinum, in Umbria) and 
two explicitly to Caligula, namely OGIS 797 (Assos in the Troad) and IJ.S 190 
(Aritium, in the province of Lusitania). A part of the last of these may be quoted 
for illustration: ‘ex mei animi sententia, ut ego iis inimicus | ero, quos C. Caesari 
Germanicoinimicosessc | cognovero, et si quis periculum ei salutiq(ue) eius | in[f]ert 
in[f]er[e]tque, armis bello intemicivo | terra mariq(ue) persequi non desinam, quoad 
| poenas ei persolverit, neq(ue) me [neque] liberos meos | eius salute cariores habebo’ 

(ILS 190, 11 . 5-11). 

4 A. v. Premerstein, Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats , 53. 




TOT A ITALIA 289 

oath was imposed. In the military colonies—and they were 
numerous—there can have been little difficulty. Though many 
of the veterans had served under Antonius, they had received 
their lands from his rival, regarded Caesar s heir as their patron 
and defender and were firmly attached to his clientela. For the 
rest, local dynasts exerted their influence to induce the municipal 
senates to pass patriotic resolutions; they persuaded their neigh¬ 
bours, they bribed or bullied their dependents, just as that wholly 
admirable character, L. Visidius, had done for Cicero s consensus 
Italiae against Antonius. 1 Many senators had fled to Antonius. 
Rival factions in the towns could now emerge, seizing power at 
the expense of absent enemies and establishing a claim upon their 
estates. Many regions were under the control of Octavianus’ 
firmest friends and partisans. It would be a brave man, or a very 
foolish one, who asserted the cause of liberty anywhere in the 
vicinity of Calvisius Sabinus or Statilius Taurus; and it may 
fairly be conjectured that no opposition confronted Maecenas at 
Arretium, where his ancestors had ruled as kings, that the 
Appuleii (a family related to Octavianus) and Nonius Gallus won 
over the city of Aesernia in northern Samnium, that the Vinicii 
could answer for fervid support from the colony of Cales in 
Campania. 2 Less eminent partisans might be no less effective. 
The Paelignian town of Sulmo had opened its gates to M. Antonius 
when he led troops for Caesar in the invasion of Italy. The adhe¬ 
sion of Sulmo to the national cause seventeen years later may 
perhaps be put down to the agency of a local office-holding family, 
the Ovidii. 3 

The soldiery might be purchased, the lower orders deceived 
or dragooned. What were the real sentiments of the upper and 
middle classes at this time ? Many a man might discern a patent 
fraud, distrust the propaganda of the Caesarian party and refuse 
to believe that the true cause of the w ar was the violent attempt 
of a degenerate Roman to install a barbarian queen upon the 
Capitol with her eunuchs, her mosquito-nets and all the apparatus 
of oriental luxury. That was absurd; and they knew what war 
w r as like. On a cool estimate, the situation was ominous enough. 

1 Cicero, Phil. 7, 23 f. 

2 M. Nonius Gallus, active for Augustus in Gaul about the time of the battle of 
Actium (Dio 51,20, 5), certainly came from Aesernia (ILS 895); and Sex. Appuleius 
was patron of that town (ILS 894). On the origin of the Vinicii, cf. above, p. 194. 

3 Note, in this period, L. Ovidius Ventrio, a municipal magistrate with eques¬ 

trian military service behind him, the first man to be accorded a public funeral in 
Sulmo (OIL ix, 3082). • 



290 TOT A ITALIA 

Antonius, the Roman imperator , wishing to secure ratification 
for his ordering of the East, was in himself no menace to the 
Empire, but a future ruler who could hope to hold it together. 
But Antonius victorious in war with the help of alien allies was 
another matter. No less disquieting, perhaps, the prospect of an 
indecisive struggle, with each side so evenly balanced, leaving the 
rivals as before, rulers of a divided empire. 

The temporary severance of East and West between the two 
dynasts after the Pact of Brundisium had been prejudicial to 
Italian economy as well as alarming to Italian sentiment. As it 
was, Antonius’ system of reducing the burdens of empire by 
delegating rule in the East to dependent princes diminished the 
profits of empire and narrowed the fields of exploitation open to 
Roman financiers and tax-farmers. 1 Interest unconsciously trans¬ 
formed itself into righteous and patriotic indignation. Land- 
owners, especially the newly enriched, shuddered at the prospect 
of impoverishment or another revolution ; and business men leapt 
forward with alacrity to reconquer the kingdoms of the East and 
to seize a spoil so long denied, the rich land of Egypt. The most 
ardent exponents of the national unity and the crusade against 
the East were no doubt to be found in the order of Roman 
knights and among those senators most nearly allied to them by 
the ties of family or business. 2 

But what if the partition of the world was to be perpetuated ? 
The limit between the dominions of the two dynasts, the Ionian 
Sea, and, by land, a narrow and impassable strip of the mountains 
of Montenegro, was the frontier given by nature, by history, by 
civilization and by language between the Latin West and the 
Greek East. The Empire might split into two parts—very easily. 
It is one of the miracles of Roman history that in subsequent 
ages the division between West and East was masked so well and 
delayed so long. The loss of the dominions beyond the sea would 
be ruinous to an Italy that had prospered and grown rich from 
the revenues of the East, the return she gained from her export 
of soldiers, financiers and governors. The source of life cut off, 
Italy would dwindle into poverty and dishonour. National pride 
revolted. Was it for this that the legions of the imperial Republic 
had shattered and swept away the kings of the East, carrying the 
eagles in victory to the Euphrates and the Caucasus ? 

1 Cf. M. A. Levi, Ottaviano Capoparte u, 153. 

2 As seventeen years before, when Caesar’s invasion of Italy was imminent, 
bankers and men of property probably received some kind of assurance. 



TOT A ITALIA 291 

Those who were not deceived by the artifices of Octavianus 
or their own emotions might be impelled by certain melancholy 
reflections to the same course of action, or at least of acquiescence. 
The better sort of people in Italy did not like war or despotic 
rule. But despotism was already there and war inevitable. In a 
restoration of liberty no man could believe any more. Yet if the 
coming struggle eliminated the last of the rival dynasts and there¬ 
by consummated the logical end of the factions, compacts and 
wars of the last thirty years, though liberty perished, peace 
might be achieved. It was worth it—not merely to the middle 
class, but to the nobiles. Their cause had fallen long ago, not 
perhaps at Pharsalus, but finally and fatally at Philippi. They 
knew it, and they knew the price of peace and survival. 

There was no choice: the Caesarian leader would tolerate no 
neutrality in the national struggle. One man, however, stood 
firm, the uncompromising Pollio. He had been a loyal friend of 
old to Antonius, of which fact Antonius now reminded him. 
Pollio in reply claimed that in mutual services Antonius had been 
the gainer: his own conscience was clear. 1 But he refused to 
support the national movement. Pollio cared for Rome, for the 
Italy of his fathers and for his own dignity—but not for any party, 
still less for the fraud that was made to appear above party and 
politics. The excesses of patriotic idealism and mendacious pro¬ 
paganda revolted both his honesty and his intellect: he had no 
illusions about Octavianus and his friends in the Caesarian party, 
old and new, about Plancus, or about Agrippa. It is to be re¬ 
gretted that no history preserves the opinions of Pollio concerning 
these transactions—and it can be well understood. His comments 
would have been frank and bitter. 

Octavianus, supported by the oath of allegiance and consensus 
of all Italy, usurped authority and the conduct of a patriotic w r ar. 
He proceeded to declare Antonius stripped of his powers and of 
the consulate for the next year. That office he allotted to an 
aristocratic partisan, Valerius Messalla; and he v^as to wage 
Rome’s war as consul himself, for the third time. Antonius was 
not outlawed—that was superfluous. On Cleopatra, the Queen of 
Egypt, the foreign enemy, the Roman leader declared war with all 
the traditional pomp of an ancient rite. With Antonius he had 

1 Velleius 2, 86, 4; ‘mea, inquit, in Antonium maiora mcrita sunt, illius in me 
beneficia notiora; itaque discrimini vestro me subtraham et ero praeda victoris.’ 
Charisius (GL 1, 80) refers to a speech or pamphlet of Pollio contra maledicta 
Antonii. 



2 Q 2 TOT A ITALIA 

severed his amicitia , their feud was private and personal. But if 
Antonius stood by his ally, his conduct would patently stamp him 
as a public enemy. 1 

The winter passed in preparation. An oath had also been ad¬ 
ministered to the provinces of the West. As in Italy, the military 
colonies were the chief support of Octavianus’ power; and the 
local magnates, whether Roman colonists and business men or 
native dynasts, were firmly devoted to the Caesarian cause. Men 
from Spain and Gallia Narbonensis had already been admitted 
to the Senate by Caesar the Dictator; and there was an imposing 
total of Roman knights to be found in provincial cities like Gades 
and Corduba. 2 Old Balbus and his nephew were all but monar¬ 
chic in their native Gades; it may be presumed that the wealthy 
family of the Annaei commanded adequate influence in Corduba ; 3 
and Forum Julii, whence came Cornelius Gallus and the ances¬ 
tors of Cn. Julius Agricola, will have displayed no hesitation. 
The native population remained tranquil: in Gaul the chieftains 
of the various tribes were attached in loyalty to the clientela of 
Caesar. Triumphs from Africa and Spain celebrated in 32 B.c. 
by L. Corniflcius and by Ap. Claudius Pulcher enhanced the 
impression of a pacified West as well as the power and glory of 
Caesar and the Caesarian party. 4 

The armies of the West were left in charge of safe partisans. 
The tried soldiers C. Carrinas and C. Calvisius Sabinus held 
Gaul and Spain, L. Autronius Paetus (or another) was proconsul 
of Africa. 5 Maecenas controlled Rome and Italy, invested with 
supreme power, but no title. 6 There must be no risks, no danger 
of an Antonian rising in Italy in defence of Libertas, no second 
War of Perusia. The surest guarantee provided also the fairest 
pretext. 7 Octavianus took with him across the seas the whole of 

1 As Dio very clearly states (50, 6, 1). 

2 Gades had five hundred citizens with the knight’s census, a number surpassed 
by no town of Italy save Patavium (Strabo, p. 169). For numerous knights at 
Corduba, subjected to a levy in 48 B.c., cf. Bell. Al. 56, 4. 

3 The knight L. Annaeus Seneca, later to be known as a historian and authority 

on rhetoric, must have been a man of some substance if he could secure senatorial 
rank for two of his sons. 4 CIL 1 2 , p. 77. 

5 CIL i 2 , p. 77. C. Carrinas (cf. also Dio 51, 21, 6) triumphed on May 30th, 
28 b.c., Calvisius on May 26th, Autronius on August 16th, probably of the same 
year: Autronius may not have been the immediate successor of L. Comificius in 
Africa. On the provincial commands in the years 32- 28, see further below, p. 302 f. 

6 Dio si, 3, 5. 

7 Dio 50, 11,5: tovs fxev orrios rt avp.npd^coatv a urw, too? S’ o-rreo? /xr^Sev p.ovw 
^cVtcst vcoxiloxtohji, to tc plytorov ottco? cVSetfTjTai rot? avdpcjTrois ort Kai to 
xrActaTov Kai to Kpdnarov tujv * Po)fj,aia>v ofJLoyvojpLovovv €X ot * 



TOT A ITALIA 293 

the Senate and a large number of Roman knights: they followed 
him from conviction, interest or fear. Hence an impressive spec¬ 
tacle: a whole people marched under the gods of Rome and the 
leadership of Caesar, united in patriotic resolve for the last war 
of all. 

Hinc Augustus agens ltalos in proelia Caesar 
cum patribus populoque, penatibus et rnagnis dis. 1 

1 Virgil, Aon. 8, 678 f. 



XXI. DUX 


T HE adversary spent the winter in Greece, ready in his pre¬ 
parations of army and fleet, but not perhaps as resolute as he 
might appear. Antonius now had to stand beside Cleopatra— 
there could be no turning back. Patrae at the mouth of the Gulf 
of Corinth was his head-quarters. His forces, fed by corn-ships 
from Egypt, were strung out in a long line from Corcyra and 
Epirus to the south-western extremity of Peloponnesus. The 
land army under the command of Canidius comprised nineteen 
of his legions: the other eleven made up the garrison of Egypt, 
Cyrene, Syria and Macedonia. 1 

Antonius could not take the offensive, for every reason, not 
merely the political damage of an invasion of Italy in the company 
of Egypt’s Queen. On military calculation, to disembark in Italy 
was hazardous—the coast lacked good harbours^and Brundisium 
was heavily fortified. Moreover, the invader would sacrifice the 
advantages of supply, reinforcement and communications. 

The fleet and the army were tied to each other. For their 
combined needs, Antonius abandoned the Albanian coast and 
the western end of the Via Egnatia. That might appear an error: 
it was probably a ruse. Antonius proposed to leave the approach 
free to the enemy, to lure Octavianus onwards, and entrap him 
with the aid of superior sea-power. Not perhaps by a battle at 
sea: the greatest general of the day would prefer to re-enact the 
strategy of Pharsalus and of Philippi, reversing the outcome and 
destroying the Caesarians. Time, money and supplies were on 
his side: he might delay and fight a battle with little loss of 
Roman blood, as fitted the character of a civil war in which men 
fought, not for a principle, but only for a choice of masters. 

In ships Antonius had the preponderance of strength; as for 
number of legions it was doubtful whether the enemy could 
transport across the Adriatic a force superior to his own—still 
less feed them when they arrived. Fighting quality was another 
matter. Since the Pact of Brundisium Antonius had been unable 
to raise recruits in Italy. The retreat from Media had seriously 
depleted his army. 2 But he made up the losses by fresh levies and 

1 J. Kromayer, Hermes xxxm (1898), 60 ff.; xxxiv (1899), 1 ff.; W. W. Tarn, 
CAH x, 100. 

1 The casualties in Media and Armenia have often been over-estimated. 



D UX 295 

augmented the total of his legions to thirty. The new recruits 
were inferior to Italians, it is true, but by no means contemptible 
if they came from the virile and martial populations of Macedonia 
and Galatia. Perhaps the picked army which he mustered in 
Epirus was composed in the main of the survivors of his veteran 
legions. 1 But would Roman soldiers fight for the Queen of 
Egypt ? They had all the old personal loyalty of Caesarian legions 
to a general of Caesar’s dash and vigour; but they lacked the 
moral advantage of attack and that stimulating dose of patriotic 
fervour that had been administered to the army of the West. Yet, 
in the last resort, Antonius might not need to appeal to the legions 
to stand in battle against their kinsmen. He might be able to 
employ sea-power with a mastery that neither Pompeius nor the 
Liberators had achieved when they contended against invaders 
coming from Italy. 

If that was his plan, it failed. Antonius had a great fleet and 
good admirals. But his ships and his officers lacked recent experi¬ 
ence of naval warfare. The admirals of Octavianus were schooled 
by their many defeats, invigorated by their final success in the 
Sicilian War. 

Octavianus did not strike at Dyrrhachium or Apollonia. Making 
an early beginning, he moved southwards instead and took up a 
position on the peninsula of Actium, on the northern shore of the 
gulf of Ambracia, while the fleet under Agrippa captured certain 
posts of Antonius in the south and destroyed his lines of com¬ 
munication. Antonius concentrated his forces in the neighbour¬ 
hood. Then all is obscure. Months passed, with operations by 
land and sea of which history has preserved no adequate record. 
Antonius’ admiral Sosius was defeated by Agrippa in a great 
naval battle; 2 and Antonius’ attempt to cut off the camp of 
Octavianus on the landward side and invest his position proved a 
signal failure. The plan had been turned against him—he was 
now encompassed and shut in. Famine and disease threatened 
his forces. 

1 As Tarn argues, CQ xxvi (1932), 75 ff. It is clear, however, that provincial 
levies were heavily drawn upon. Brutus, for example, raised two legions of Mace¬ 
donians (Appian, BC 3,79, 324). As for Antonius, O. Cuntz {Jahreshefte xxv (1929), 
70 ff.) deduced from the gentilicia of a number of soldiers of eastern origin the fact 
that they were given the Roman franchise on enlistment by certain partisans of 
Antonius. Note also the inscription from Philae in Egypt ( OGIS 196), dated to 
32 B.c., mentioning an errapxo? ( praefectus ), C. Julius Papius, and some centurions, 
among them a man called Demetrius. A neglected passage in Josephus ( BJ 1, 324, 
cf. AJ 14, 449) attests local recruiting in Syria in 38 b.c. 

2 Dio 50, 14, 1 f. 



296 D UX 

Then the odds moved more heavily against him. Desertion 
set in. Certain of the vassal princes went over to the enemy, 
among them Amyntas with his Galatian cavalry. Romans too 
departed, M. Junius Silanus and the agile Dellius, whose changes 
of side were proverbial but not unparalleled. 1 The ex-Republican 
M. Licinius Crassus may have made his peace with Octavianus 
about the same time—on terms, namely the consulate. 2 Even 
Ahenobarbus went, stealthily in a small boat: Antonius dis¬ 
patched his belongings after him.-* Plancus and Titius had 
departed on a political calculation. Now the military situation 
w r as desperate, heralding the end of a great career and a 
powerful party. Only three men of consular standing remained 
on Antonius’ side, Canidius, Sosius and Gellius Poplicola. It 
would not be long before the defection of the leaders, Roman 
senators or eastern princes, spread to the ships and the legions. 
Canidius was now in favour of a retreat to Macedonia, to seek 
an issue there with the help of barbarian allies. 4 The battle of 
Actium was decided before it was fought. 

The true story is gone beyond recall. It is uncertain whether 
Antonius designed to fight a naval battle for victory or to escape 
from the blockade. 5 6 On the morning of September 2nd his ships 
rowed out, ready for action. Of his admirals, the principal were 
Sosius and Poplicola; commands were also held by M. Insteius, 
a man from Pisaurum, by the experienced ex-Pompeian Q. Nasi- 
dius and by M. Octavius, of a consular family. 0 On the other side 
the fleet of Octavianus faced the Antonians. The battle was to be 
fought under the auspices of Caesar—Caesar’s heir in the fore¬ 
front, 

stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas 
laeta vomunt, patriumque aperitur vertice sidus. 7 

1 Plutarch, Antonius 59 (misdated, cf. Dio 50, 13, 8; Velleius 2, 84, 2). 

2 Dio 51, 4, 3. There is no indication of the date of his desertion. He had 
previously been with Sex. Pompeius. 

3 Plutarch, Antonius 63; Dio 50, 13, 6; Velleius 2, 84, 2; Suetonius, Nero 3, 2. 
He died shortly afterwards. 

4 Plutarch, Antonius 63. Like Pompeius Magnus ( SIG 3 762), Antonius hoped 
for assistance from the Dacians. 

5 For the former view, W. W. Ta m y JRS xxi (1931), 173 ff.; xxvm (1938), 165 fF.; 
for the latter, J. Kromayer, Hermes xxxiv (1899), 1 ff.; lxviii (1933), 361 fF.; G. W. 
Richardson, JRS xxvii (1937), 1 fF. Against Tam’s theory it can be argued, with 
Kromayer, that Antonius had already been severely defeated at sea, baffled on land. 

6 The names of the commanders on either side are given by Velleius 2, 85, 2; 
Plutarch, Antonius 65; Dio 50, 13, 5; 14, 1. Also Appian, BC 4, 38, 161 (for 
Messalla). 

7 Virgil, Aen. 8, 680 f. 



DTJX 297 

But Octavianus, though ‘dux’, was even less adequate in mari¬ 
time warfare than on land. Agrippa, the victor of Naulochus, was 
in command, supported by the consul Messalla, by L. Arruntius, 
M. Lurius and L. Tarius Rufus. Two generals, Statilius Taurus, 
the greatest of the marshals after Agrippa, and the renegade Titius 
were in charge of the Caesarian legions. 

The course, character and duration of the battle itself is all a 
mystery—and a topic of controversy. There may have been little 
fighting and comparatively few casualties. A large part of the fleet 
of Antonius either refused battle or after defeat was forced back 
into harbour . 1 Antonius himself with forty ships managed to 
breakthrough and follow Cleopatra in flight to Egypt. Treachery 
was at work in the land-army. Canidius the commander sought 
to induce his soldiers to march away through Macedonia, but 
in vain. He had to escape to Antonius. After some days the 
legions capitulated, an interval perhaps spent in bargaining for 
terms: the Antonian veterans subsequently received a share of 
colonial assignments . 2 

The chief author of treachery to Antonius in the naval battle 
(if treachery there was), and avoidance of bloodshed to Rome, is 
not known. Sosius might be suspected. Certain of the Antonians 
were executed, but Sosius was spared, at the instance, it was 
alleged, of L. Arruntius, an ex-Pompeian . 3 Sosius’ peril and 
Sosius’ rescue may have been artfully staged. 

Neither of the rivals in the contest for power had intended 
that there should be a serious battle if they could help it. So it 
turned out. Actium was a shabby affair, the worthy climax to the 
ignoble propaganda against Cleopatra, to the sworn and sacred 
union of all Italy. But the young Caesar required the glory of 
a victory that would surpass the greatest in all history, Roman or 
Hellenic . 4 In the official version of the victor, Actium took on 
august dimensions and an intense emotional colouring, being 
transformed into a great naval battle, with lavish wealth of con¬ 
vincing and artistic detail. More than that, Actium became the 
contest of East and West personified, the birth-legend in the 
mythology of the Principate. On the one side stood Caesar’s heir 
with the Senate and People of Rome, the star of the Julian house 
blazing on his head; in the air above, the gods of Rome, contending 

1 For the hypothesis, largely based on Horace, Epodes 9, 19 f., that the whole 
left wing refused to fight, cf. W. W. Tam, JRS xxi (1931), *73 ff* 

2 Hyginus, De limitibus constituendis, p. 177. 

3 Velleius 2, 86, 2. 

4 Cf. W. W. Tam, JRS xxi (1931), 179 ff. 



zgS D UX 

against the bestial divinities of Nile. Against Rome were arrayed 
the motley levies of all the eastern lands, Egyptians, Arabs and 
Bactrians, led by a renegade in un-Roman attire, ‘variis Antonius 
armis\ Worst of all, the foreign woman— 

sequiturque, nefas, Acgyptia coniunx. 1 

The victory was final and complete. There was no haste to 
pursue the fugitives to Egypt. Octavianus had a huge army on 
his hands, with many legions to be paid, demobilized or employed. 
He sent Agrippa at once to Italy. The work must begin without 
delay. He had not gone farther east than Samos when he was 
himself recalled by troubles in Italy. There had been a plot —or 
so it was alleged. It was suppressed at once by Maecenas. 2 The 
author was a son of the relegated Lepidus: his wife, Servilia, who 
had once been betrothed to Octavianus, bravely followed him in 
death, true to noble and patrician tradition. She was the last 
person of note in a family that claimed descent from the nobility 
of Alba Longa. More alarming was the news reported by Agrippa 
—veterans clamorous and mutinous. Octavianus crossed the 
wintry seas to Brundisium and appeased their demands A 

Warfare would provide occupation for some of his legions. 
Though no serious outbreak had disturbed the provinces, the 
repercussions of a Roman civil war would soon be felt. Some 
at least of the triumphs soon to be held by Caesarian marshals 
(no fewer than six in 28-26 B.c.) were fairly earned. 

Then came the reckoning with Antonius. In the summer of 
the year 30 b.c. Octavianus approached Egypt from the side of 
Syria, Cornelius Gallus from the west. Pinarius Scarpus, Anto¬ 
nios’ lieutenant in the Cyrenaica, surrendered his four legions 
and passed into the service of the victor. 4 Antonius and his con¬ 
sort spent nearly a year after the disaster in the last revels, the 
last illusory plans and the last despondency before death. After 
brief resistance Antonius was defeated in battle. He took his own 
life. The army of the Roman People entered the capital city of 
Egypt on the first day of August. Such was the episode called 
the Bellum Alexa?idrinum. 

Cleopatra survived Antonius by a few days which at once 
passed into anecdote and legend. To Octavianus the Queen was 
an embarrassment if she lived: 5 but a Roman imperator could not 

1 Aen. 8, 688. 1 Velleius 2, 88. 3 Dio 51, 4, 3 ff. 

4 lb. 51, 9, 1. For the coins of Scarpus, see BMC , R. Rep. 11, 586, corrected 
by BMC , R. Etnp. 1, 111. 

5 Cf. E. Groag, Klio xiv (1914), 63. 




D UX 299 

order the execution of a woman. After negotiations managed 
through his friends Gallus and Proculeius, he interviewed the 
Queen. 1 Diplomacy, veiled intimidation and the pride of Cleo¬ 
patra found a way out. The last of the Ptolemies scorned to be 
led in a Roman triumph. Her firm and defiant end, worthy of 
a Roman noble in ferocia , set final consecration on the myth of 
Cleopatra : 

deliberata morte ferocior 
saevis Liburnis scilicet invidens 
privata deduci superbo 

non humilis mulier triumpho. 2 

In satisfying the honour of Cleopatra, the bite of the asp served 
in double measure the convenience of a Roman politician. The 
adversary must have been redoubtable indeed! It was not the 
glorious battle of Actium and the defeat of the greatest soldier of 
the day that called forth the shrillest jubilation from the victors, 
but the death of the foreign queen, the ‘fatale monstrum’. ‘Nunc 
est bibendum’ sang the poet Horace, safe and subsidized in Rome. 

There remained the partisans of Antonius. Caesar had in¬ 
voked and practised the virtue of clemency to extenuate the guilt 
of civil war. 3 Likewise did his heir, when murder could serve 
no useful purpose: he even claimed that after his victory he 
spared all Roman citizens who asked to be spared. 4 dementia 
became one of his cardinal virtues; and the historian Velleius 
Paterculus fervently extols the clemency of Italy’s leader after 
Actium. 5 It is naturally difficult to control or refute these partisan 
assertions. Sosius survived Actium; young Furnius and young 
Metellus saved their fathers; 6 IV 1 . Aemilius Scaurus, the half- 
brother of Sex. Pompeius was pardoned, likewise Cn. Cornelius 
Cinna. 7 Scribonius Curio, however, was executed—perhaps this 
true son of a loyal and spirited father disdained to beg for mercy: 8 
his mother Ful via would haveapproved. There were other victims. 
As for the Antonians later captured, four were put to death, among 

1 Plutarch, Antonius 77 ff.; Dio 51, 11, 4 (Proculeius); Plutarch, Antonius 79 
(Gallus). Proculeius had been holding a naval command at Ccphallenia after the 
Battle of Actium, BMC , R. Rep . n, 533. 

1 Horace, Odes 1, 37, 29 ff. 

3 Above, p. 159 

4 Res Gestae 3: ‘victorquc omnibus v[eniam petentibjus civibus peperci.’ 

5 Velleius 2, 86, 2: ‘victoria vero fuit clementissima nec quisquam intcrcmptus 
nisi paucissimi et hi qui deprecari quidem pro sc non sustinerent.’ 

0 Seneca, De ben. 2, 25, 1 (Furnius); Appian, BC 4, 42, 175 ff. (Metellus). 

7 Dio 51, 2, 4 f. (Scaurus); Seneca, Dc clem, i, 9, 11 (Cinna). 

8 Dio 51, 2, 5. Aquiilius Florus and his son were also killed. 



DUX 


3 00 

them the last of the assassins of the Dictator, D. Turullius and 
Cassius of Parma, closing the series that began with C. Trebo- 
nius, the proconsul of Asia. 1 P. Canidius, the last of Antonius' 
marshals, also perished. Loyal to Antonius, he shared in the 
calumny against his leader and suffered a double detraction. They 
said that he had deserted the legions after Actium, that he died 
without fortitude. 2 Antonius' eldest son was also killed. 

The children of Cleopatra presented a more delicate problem. 
‘A multitude of Caesars is no good thing.' 3 That just observation 
sealed the fate of Ptolemy Caesar, whom many believed son of 
the Dictator. Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene were re¬ 
served to walk in a Roman triumph. The boy is not heard of 
again—he was probably suppressed. The girl was enlisted as an 
instrument of Roman imperial policy, being given in marriage to 
Juba, the prince of the Numidian royal stock who became King 
of Mauretania. 

Such was the fate of Egypt's Queen and her children, crowned 
kings and queens. The Roman imperator seized the heritage of 
the Ptolemies. He claimed, using official language, to have added 
the land to the Empire of the Roman People : 4 he treated Egypt as 
his own private and dynastic possession and governed it through 
a viceroy, jealously excluding Roman senators. The first Prefect 
of Egypt was C. Cornelius Gallus, a Roman knight. 5 6 

For the rest of the year 30 and the winter following the con¬ 
queror proceeded to make his dispositions in the East. The vassal 

[ >rinces, well aware of their own weakness, were unswervingly 
oyal to Roman authority and Roman interests, by whomsoever 
represented, by Pompeius, by Cassius, or by Antonius. Octavianus 
deposed a certain number of petty dynasts or city tyrants. The 
greater vassals, however, he was eager to attach to his own clien- 
telaP As heir to the power of Antonius in the East he confirmed 
their titles when he did not augment their territories. It had been 
an essential part of his propaganda to demonstrate that Antonius 
bestowed upon unworthy and criminal aliens the dominions of 
the Roman People. That did not matter now. The gifts to the 

1 Dio 51, 8, 2 f. (Turullius); Velleius 2, 87, 3 (Cassius). 

2 Velleius 2, 87, 3: ‘Canidius timidius dccessit quam professioni eius, qua 

semper usus erat, congrucbat.’ J Plutarch, Antonius 81. 

4 Res Gestae 27: ‘Aegyptum imperio populi [Rojmani adieci’; ILS 91 : ‘Aegupto 
in potestatem j populi Romani redacta.’ 

5 ILS 8995 (Philae): ‘C. Cornelius Cn. f. Gallufs eqjues Romanus pos[t] rege[s] | 
a Caesarc deivi f. devictos praefectfus Alexjandreae et Aegypti primus’, &c. 

6 For details of these arrangements, cf. Tarn, CAH x, 113 ff. 



DUX 301 

children of Cleopatra, whatever they might be and whatever they 
were worth, Octavianus naturally cancelled; for the rest, when he 
had completed his arrangements, the territory in Asia Minor and 
Syria directly administered by Rome was considerably smaller 
than it had been after Pompeius’ ordering of the East, thirty years 
before. Precisely as in the system of Antonius, four men con¬ 
trolled wide realms and guarded the eastern frontiers, Polemo, 
Amyntas, Archelaus and Herod; and there were three Roman 
provinces in Asia, namely Asia, Bithynia-Pontus and Syria. 

Such was the sober truth about the much advertised reconquest 
of the East for Rome. 1 The artful conqueror preferred to leave 
things as he found them. The profession of defending Rome’s 
Empire and the very spirit of Rome from the alien menace, 
imposed on Caesar’s heir in Italy for the needs of his war and not 
safely to be discarded in peace, was quietly neglected in the East, 
where he inherited the policy of Antonius in order to render it 
more systematic. Temples dedicated at Nicaca and Ephesus for 
the cult of the goddess Rome and the god Divus Julius did not 
preclude the worship of the new lord of the East as well, manifest 
and monarchic. 2 

The frontier itself was not an urgent problem. Armenia had 
been annexed by Antonius, but Armenia fell away during the 
War of Actium. Octavianus was not incommoded: he took no 
steps to recover that region, but invoked and maintained the 
traditional Roman practice as an excuse for not turning the land 
into a Roman province. 3 

Acquiring Egypt and its wealth for Rome, he could afford to 
abandon Armenia and one part of the north-eastern frontier 
policy of Antonius. His retreat from commitments in the East 
was unobtrusive and masterly. With the Mcde, Antonius’ ally, 
he began by following Antonius’ policy and even granted him for 
a time the territory of Armenia Minor—for the Mede would hold 
both Armenia and Parthia in check. Yet against Parthia Octavia¬ 
nus neither bore resentment nor threatened war. Instead, he 
negotiated. When a Parthian pretender fled to Syria, he preferred 
to use that advantage for peace rather than for war. 

Crassusand the national honour clamoured for a war of revenge; 
and the last of the dynasts might desire to outshine all the generals 
of the Republic, Pompeius, Crassus and Antonius, in distant con¬ 
quest, for glory, for aggrandizement—and to extinguish the recent 

' Res Gestae 27, cf. Virgil, Georgies 2, 171; 3, 30; 4, 560 ff. 

J Dio 51, 20, 6 f. 3 Res Gestae 27. 



302 D UX 

memory of civil strife. Rome expected (and the poets announced) 
the true, complete and sublime triumph—the young Caesar would 
pacify the ends of the earth, subjugating both Britain and Parthia 
to the rule of Rome. 1 No themes are more frequent in the decade 
after Actium—or less relevant to the history of those years. Octa- 
vianus had his own ideas. It might be inexpedient to defy, but it 
was easy to delude, the sentiments of a patriotic people. The 
disaster of Crassus and the ill success of Antonius, even though not 
as great as many believed, were sobering lessons; and there was 
work to do in the West and in the North. To serve the policy of 
Rome and secure the eastern frontiers, it was enough to invoke the 
arts of diplomacy and the threat of supporting rival claimants to 
the insecure throne of Parthian monarchy. That kingdom, indeed, 
though difficult to an invader and elusive from its very lack of order 
and cohesion, was neither strong in war nor aggressive in policy. 
Adulation, perversity or ignorance might elevate Parthia to be a 
rival empire of Rome: 2 it could not stand the trial of arms—or even 
of diplomacy. Of an invasion of Asia and Syria there was no 
danger to be apprehended, save when civil war Joosened the 
fabric of Roman rule. There were to be no more civil wars. 

So much for the East. It was never a serious preoccupation to 
its conqueror during his long rule. The menace of Parthia, like 
the menace of Egypt, was merely a pretext in his policy. 

There was a closer danger, his own equals and rivals, the pro- 
consuls of the military provinces. Egypt was secure, or deemed 
secure, in the keeping of a Roman knight. But what of Syria and 
Macedonia? Soon after Actium, Messalla was put in charge of 
Syria: 3 Octavianus’ first governor of Macedonia is nowhere 
attested—perhaps it was Taurus. 4 But Messalla and Taurus 
departed to the West before long, to replace Carrinas and Calvi- 
sius in Gaul and Spain. 5 In Syria a safe man became proconsul, 

1 e.g. Virgil, Aen. 7, 606; Horace, Odes 1, 12, 53 If.; 3, 5, 2 ff.; Propertius 2, 10, 
13 ff- 

2 It was an especial habit of the Greeks to make much of Parthia. The historian 

Livy rebuked them (9, 18, 6). 3 Dio 51, 7, 7, cf. Tibullus 1, 7, 13 ff. 

4 No evidence—but Taurus was an honorary duovir of Dyrrhachium, JLS 2678. 

5 Taurus in Spain, Dio 51, 20, 5 (under the year 29 B.c.). Calvisius held his 
triumph on May 26th, 28 b.c. (C 7 L i 2 , p. 77): none the less his command in Spain 
may have preceded that of Taurus. He is not mentioned at Actium. As for Gaul, 
Dio records operations of Nonius Gallus (50, 20, 5) and of C. Carrinas (51, 21, 6). 
Carrinas held a triumph, on May 30th, 28 b.c. (CIL I 2 , p. 77). Not so Nonius, so 
far as known, though he took an imperatorial salutation (.ILS 895). The precise 
nature and date of his command is not certain (see Ritterling, Fasti des r. Deutsch¬ 
land unter dent Prinzipat, 3 f.). For Messalla, Tibullus 1, 7, 3 ff.; CIL I 2 , p. 50 and 
p. 77 (Sept. 25th, 27 b.c.). 



DUX 303 

M. Tullius Cicero (cos. suff. 30 b.c.), the dissolute and irascible 
son of the great orator; 1 in Macedonia, a very different character, 
the distinguished renegade M. Licinius Crassus (cos. 30 B.c.). 2 
The other provinces of the East, not so important because they 
lacked permanent garrisons of legions, were in the hands of 
reliable partisans. 3 

In the summer of 29 B.c. Octavianus returned to Italy. He 
entered Rome on August 13th. During three successive days the 
imperial city witnessed the pomp of three triumphs, for the cam¬ 
paigns in Illyricum, for the War of Actium and for the War of 
Alexandria—all wars of Rome against a foreign enemy. The 
martial glory of the renascent state was also supported in the 
years following by the triumphs of men prominent in the Caesa¬ 
rian party, the proconsuls of the western provinces: 4 from Spain, 
C. Calvisius Sabinus and Sex. Appuleius; from Africa, L. Autro- 
nius Paetus; from Gaul, C. Carrinas and M. Valerius Messalla. 
The proconsul of Macedonia, M. Licinius Crassus, held that 
his successes deserved special honour: he was not allowed to 
celebrate his triumph till July, 27 B.c. 

When a party has triumphed in civil war, it claims to have 
asserted the ideals of liberty and concord. Peace was a tangible 
blessing. For a generation, all parties had striven for peace: 
once attained, it became the spoil and prerogative of the 
victors. Already the Senate had voted that the Temple of Janus 
should be closed, a sign that all the world was at peace on land 
and sea. 5 The imposing and archaic ceremony did not, however, 
mean that warfare was to cease: the generals of Rome were active 
in the frontier provinces. The exaltation of peace by a Roman 
statesman might attest a victory, but it portended no slackening 
of martial effort. The next generation was to witness the orderly 
execution of a programme of rational aggression without match 
or parallel as yet in the history of Rome. An assertion of imperial 

1 Appian (ISC 4, 51, 221) records that he became governor of Syria. About the 
date, no evidence. The period 29-27 B.c. is attrac tive, but 27 25 not excluded. On 
his habits, Seneca, Suasoriae 7, 13 ; Plinv, NH 14, 147. He once threw a wine-cup 
in the face of M. Agrippa. 

2 Oio 51, 23, 2 ff. His two campaigns belong to the years 29 and 28. 

i C Norbanus Flaccus, cos. 38 b.c., was proconsul of Asia soon after Actium 
(Josephus, AJ 16, 171), perhaps for more than one year; and a certain Thorius 
Maccus, otherwise unknown (but from Lanuvium), was proconsul ot Bithyma 

28 b.c. (P-W vi a, 346). 

4 CIL i 2 , p. 50 and p. 77. 

5 Res Gestae 13. At the same time the ancient ceremony of the Augurium Salutis 
was revived (Dio 51, 20, 4). 



3 o 4 D UX 

policy and an omen of victory was then embodied in the dedica¬ 
tion of the Ara Pacts Augustae. Which was not unfitting. To the 
Roman, peace was not a vague emollient: the word ‘pax* can 
seldom be divorced from notions of conquest, or at least compul¬ 
sion. It was Rome’s imperial destiny to compel the nations to 
live at peace, with clemency towards the subject and suppression 
of the rest: 

pacisque imponere morem, 
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. 1 

But the armies of Rome presented a greater danger to her sta¬ 
bility than did any foreign enemy. After Actium, the victor who 
had seduced in turn the armies of all his adversaries found him¬ 
self in the embarrassing possession of nearly seventy legions. For 
the military needs of the empire, fewer than thirty would be 
ample: any larger total was costly to maintain and a menace to 
internal peace. He appears to have decided upon a permanent 
establishment of about twenty-six legions. The remainder were 
disbanded, the veterans being settled in colonies in Italy and in 
the provinces. The land was supplied by confiscation from 
Antonian towns and partisans in Italy, or purchased from the 
war-booty, especially the treasure of Egypt. 2 

Liberty was gone, but property, respected and secure, was now 
mounting in value. The beneficial working of the rich treasure 
from Egypt became everywhere apparent. 3 Above all, security of 
tenure was to be the watchword of the new order. 4 Italy longed 
for the final stabilization of the revolutionary age. The War of 
Actium had been fought and won, the menace to Italy’s life and 
soul averted. But salvation hung upon a single thread. Well might 
men adjure the gods of Rome to preserve that precious life, 

hunc saltern everso iuvenem succurrere saeclo 
ne prohibete. 5 

The poet Virgil had brought to completion the four books of his 
Georgies during the War of Actium and Octavianus’ absence in 
the East. The Georgies published, he had already begun to com¬ 
pose a national epic on the origins and destiny of imperial Rome. 
To Venus, the divine ancestress of the Julian house, Jupiter 

1 Virgil, Aen. 6, 852 f. 

1 Dio 51, 4, 6. Some of the dispossessed Italians were settled in Macedonia. 

3 lb. 51, 17, 8: to re ovp.TTav rj re apx^] V Tail' 'PcopLatajv €7rXoVTi<jdr] Kai ra Upa 
a vtwv eKoaprjdr). 

4 Velleius 2, 89, 4: ‘certa cuique rerum suarum possession 

5 Virgil, Georgies 1, 500 f. 



D UX 305 

unfolded the annals of the future. On the brightest page stands 
emblazoned the Caesar of Trojan stock, destined himself for 
divinity, but not before his rule on earth has restored confidence 
between men and respect for the gods, blotting out the primal 
curse of fratricidal strife: 

nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar 
imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris 
Iulius a magno demissum nomen Iulo. 
hunc tu dim cael^ spoliis Orientis onustum 
accipies secura; vocabitur hie quoque votis. 
aspera turn positis mitescent saecula bellis; 
cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus 
iura dabunt. 1 

Caesar's heir was veritably a world-conqueror, not in verse 
only, or by the inevitable flattery of eastern lands. Like Alexan¬ 
der, he had spread his conquest to the bounds of the world; and 
he was acclaimed in forms and language once used of Alexander. 2 
He was now building for himself a royal mausoleum beside the 
Tiber; and public sacrifices for his safety had been celebrated 
by a Roman consul. 3 The avenging of Caesar, and with it his 
own divine descent, was advertised by the inauguration of the 
temple of Divus Julius in 29 B.c. 4 But insistence on military 
monarchy and Trojan ancestry might provoke disquiet. When 
the Triumvir Antonius abode for long years in the East men 
might fear lest the city be dethroned from its pride of place, 
lest the capital of empire be transferred to other lands. The 
propaganda of Octavianus had skilfully worked upon such appre¬ 
hensions. Once aroused they would be difficult to allay: their 
echo could still be heard. Horace produces a divine decree, 
forbidding Troy ever to be rebuilt; 3 Virgil is quite explicit; 6 and 
Livy duly demonstrates how the patriot Camillus not only saved 
Rome from the invader but prevented the citizens from abandon¬ 
ing the destined seat of empire for a new capital. 7 Camillus was 
hailed as Romulus, as a second founder and saviour of Rome— 
‘Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbish 8 In Romulus 

1 Aen. I, 286m 

2 Cf. A. Alfoldi, RM mi (1937), 48 fF., discussing the symbolic decoration of the 
cuirass on Augustus’ statue from Prima Porta. Norden argued that Aen. 6, 7Q4 fF. 
derives from traditional laudations of Alexander, the world-conqueror. 

3 Dio 51, 21, 2 (cf. 19, 2 f). 4 lb. 51, 22, 2. 

5 Odes 3, 3, 57 ff- 

h Aen. 12, 828: ‘occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia.’ 

7 Livy 5, 51 ff. s lb. 5, 49, 7- 



3 o6 D UX 

there was to hand an authentic native hero, a god’s son and him¬ 
self elevated to heaven after death as the god Quirinus. Full 
honour was done to the founder in the years after Actium. Caesar 
had set his own statue in the temple of Quirinus: Caesar’s heir 
was identified with that god by the poet Virgil. 1 Not by conquest 
only but by the foundation of a lasting city did a hero win divine 
honours in life and divinity after death. That was the lesson of 
Romulus: it was enunciated in prose as well as in verse. 2 

The conqueror of the East and hero of Actium must now gird 
himself to the arduous task of rebuilding a shattered common¬ 
wealth and infusing it with new vigour. The attempts of earlier 
statesmen had been baulked by fate—or rather by their own 
ambition, inadequacy or dishonesty. Sulla established order but 
no reconciliation in Rome and Italy. Pompeius destroyed the 
Sullan system; and when enlisted in an emergency, he turned 
his powers to selfish ends. The rule of Caesar and of the 
Triumvirs bore the title and pretext of settling the constitution 
on a stable basis (rei publicae constituendae) . Caesar had put off 
the task, the Triumvirs had not even begun. The duty could no 
longer be evaded on the plea of wars abroad or faction at home. 
Peace had been established, there was only one faction left—and 
it was in power. 

The pleasing legend Libertatis P. R. Vindex appears on coins. 3 
Nobody was deceived by this symbol of victory in civil war. What 
Rome and Italy desired was a return, not to freedom—anything 
but that—but to civil and ordered government, in a word, to 
‘normal conditions’. Octavianus in his sixth and seventh con¬ 
sulates carried out certain constitutional changes, various in kind 
and variously to he interpreted. 

Hopeful signs were not wanting in 28 B.c. Octavianus was 
consul for the sixth time with Agrippa as his colleague. In the 
previous year he had augmented the total of the patrician families; 
the two colleagues now^ held a census in virtue of pow ers specially 
granted and took in hand a purge of the Senate. 4 ‘Unworthy’ 
members were expelled or persuaded to depart. The point and 

1 Georgies 3, 27. On the cult of Romulus about this time, cf. esp. J. Gage, 
Melanges xlvii (1930), 138 ff. 

2 The account of Romulus in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2, 7 ff.), with its 

remarkable Caesarian or Augustan anticipations, probably derives from a source 
written soon after Actium, as Premerstein argues, Vom Werden und Wesen des 
Prinzipats , 8 ff. 3 BMC , R. Emp. 1, 112. 

4 Dio 53, 1, 1 ff. That this was done in virtue of censoria potestas is shown by 
the Fasti of Venusia, ILS 6123. The increase of patricians was sanctioned by a 
Lex Saertia ('Tacitus, Ann. 11, 25). L. Saenius was cos. stiff, in 30 b.c. 



DUX 307 

meaning of this ‘reform’ will emerge later. Octavianus himself 
assumed the title traditionally pertaining to the senator foremost 
in rank and authority, that of princeps senatus. Further, a com¬ 
prehensive measure of legislation was promoted to annul the 
illegal and arbitrary acts of the Triumvirate—not all of them 
surely: the scope and force of this act of indemnity will have 
depended upon the will and convenience of the government. 

How r far was the process of regulating the State to go, under 
what name were the Caesarian party and its leader to rule ? He 
had resigned the title of Triumvir, but it might have been con¬ 
tended that he continued unobtrusively to exercise the dictatorial 
powers of that office, had the question been of concern to men 
at the time. From 31 B.c. onwards he had been consul every year. 
But that was not all. The young despot not only conceded, but 
even claimed, that he held sovranty over the whole State and the 
whole Empire, for he solemnly affirmed that in the sixth and 
seventh consulates he transferred the Commonwealth from his 
own power to the discretion of the Senate and the People. By 
what right had it been in his hand? He indicates that it was 
through general consent that he had acquired supreme power— 
‘per consensum universorum potitus rerum omnium.’ 1 It has 
often been believed that the words allude to the coniuratio of 
32 B.c., when an extraordinary manifestation of the will of the 
people delegated its sovranty, passing beyond the forms and 
names of an outw r orn constitution. The reference is probably 
wider, not merely to the oath of allegiance hut to the crowding 
victory of Actium and the reconquest of all the eastern lands for 
Rome. 2 The consensus embraced and the oath enlisted, not 
only all Italy, but the whole world. 3 In 28 b.c. Caesar’s heir stood 
supreme—‘potentiae securus’. 4 

Naked despotism is vulnerable. The imperator could depend 
upon the plebs and the army. But he could not rule without the 
help of an oligarchy. His primacy was precarious if it did not 
accommodate itself to the wishes of the chief men in his party. 
For loyal service they had been heavily rewarded with consulates, 
triumphs, priesthoods and subsidies; some had even been elevated 
into the patriciate. Octavianus could count upon certain of his 

1 Res Gestae 34: ‘in consulatu sexto et septimo, pofstquam b]ella [civiljia ex- 
stinxeram, | per consensum universorum [potitus reru]m om[n]ium, rem publicam | 
ex mea potestate in senat[us populique Romjani [a]rbitrium transtuli.’ 

1 For this interpretation, H. Berve, Hermes lxxi (1936), 241 ff. 

3 Cf. Virgil, Georgies 4, 561 f.: ‘victorque volentes | per populos dat iura.’ 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 28. 



3 o8 DUX 

marshals, such as Agrippa, Calvisius and Taurus, to any extremity. 
But the military oligarchy was highly variegated. There was scarce 
a man among the consulars but had a Republican—or Antonian— 
past behind him. Treachery destroys both the credit and the con¬ 
fidence of any who deal in that commodity. No ruler could have 
faith in men like Plancus and Titius. Ahenobarbus the Repub¬ 
lican leader was dead; but Messalla and Pollio carried some 
authority. If the young despot were not willing of his own accord 
to adopt—or at least publish—some tolerable compromise with 
Senate and People, certain eminent personages might have brought 
secret and urgent pressure to bear upon him. 

Some informal exchange of opinion there may well have been. 
No record would be likely to survive, when an important public 
event of the year has barely been preserved, let alone understood 
in full significance. Being consul (and perhaps able to invoke tribu- 
nician power) 1 Octavianus possessed the means to face and frus¬ 
trate any mere constitutional opposition in Rome. It would be 
uncomfortable but not dangerous. Armies and provinces were 
another matter. 

M. Licinius Crassus, the proconsul of Macedonia, after pacify¬ 
ing Thrace and defeating the Bastarnae, earned a triumph but 
claimed more, namely the ancient honour of the spolia opima, for 
he had slain the chieftain of the enemy in battle with his own 
hand, a feat that had fallen to only two Romans since Romulus. 
Such military glory infringed a monopoly. The opportune dis¬ 
covery, or forgery, of an inscription was enlisted to refute the 
claim of Crassus. 2 Fraud or an antiquarian quibble robbed the 
proconsul of the spolia opima . An arbitrary decision denied him 
the title of imperator, w hich had been conceded since Actium to 
other proconsuls, and to one commander at least who was per¬ 
haps not a proconsul and was certainly not of consular standing. 3 

1 If he received tribunicia potestas for life in 30 b.c. (Dio 51, 19, 6), he seems 
to have made little use of it before 23. See further below, p. 336. 

2 According to Dio (51, 24, 4) he would have been entitled to the spolia opima , 
€L7T€p avroKpariop <jTpaT7]yos eyeyovci. Dessau ( Hermes xli (1906), 142 ff.) dis¬ 
covered the startling relevance of Livy 4, 19 f. All historians before Livy stated 
that Cornelius Cossus won the spolia opima when military tribune: but Augustus 
told Livy that he had seen in the temple of Juppiter Feretrius a linen corslet with the 
name of Cossus inscribed, giving him the title of consul. This frail and venerable 
relic, intact after the passage of four centuries, was no doubt invoked to demon¬ 
strate that Crassus had no valid claim to the spolia opima because he was not fighting 
under his own auspices. The relevance of the dispute to the constitutional settle¬ 
ment of 28 27 B.r. was first emphasized by E. Groag, P-W xm, 283 ff. 

3 Nonius Gallus (ILS 895, cf. Dio 51, 20, 5). It is not certain, however, what 
position he was holding in Gaul ( above, p. 302). Dio expressly states that Octavianus 



D UX 309 

Vet Crassus was granted the hare distinction of a triumph when 
a convenient interval had elapsed (July, 27 b.c.), after which he 
disappears completely from history. 

Jn robbing Crassus of the title of imperator Octavianus raised, 
perhaps at an untimely moment, the delicate question of his 
own standing in public law. Like his policy, his powers were a 
direct continuation of the Triumvirate, even though that despotic 
office had expired years before: in law the only power to which 
he could appeal if he wished to coerce a proconsul w r as the consular 
authority, exorbitantly enhanced. To preclude disputes of com¬ 
petence, a new regulation was required. 

No source records any political repercussions of the clash with 
Crassus, any hint of the attitude of other proconsuls. Had he 
firm allies or kinsmen among them, the course of events might 
have been different. 1 There is a mysterious calamity in these 
years unexplained in cause, obscure in date. C. Cornelius Gallus 
the Prefect of Egypt, vain, eloquent and ambitious, succumbed 
to imprudence or the calumny of his enemies, who no doubt 
were numerous. Octavianus disowned him, breaking off all 
amicitia. After a prosecution for high treason in the law courts 
the Senate passed a decree against the offender. Gallus took his 
own life (27 B.c.). 2 The offence of Gallus is variously described 
as base ingratitude, statues erected to himself and boastful in¬ 
scriptions incised on the pyramids of Egypt. 3 Lapidary evi¬ 
dence, though not from a pyramid, shows the Roman knight 
proclaiming that he advanced southwards in conquest farther 
than any army of the Roman People or monarch of Egypt. 4 

took the title of imperator from Crassus and added it to his own total (51, 25, 2). 
A premature Athenian inscription (ILS 8810) gives Crassus the title he deserved 
(ovroKpdrtop). 

1 Messalla had left Syria, perhaps succeeded there by M. Tullius Cicero (above, 
p. 303). As for the West, Sex. Appuleius, the son of Octavianus’ half-sister, followed 
Taurus in Spain. Messalla, who triumphed from Gaul on September 25th, 27 b.c., 
was in command of a great military province at the time of Crassus* dispute with 
Octavianus. The successor of L. Autronius Paetus as proconsul of Africa is not 
known. 

2 Jerome ( Chron ., p. 164 n) puts his death in 27 b.c. Dio narrates the prosecution 
and end of Gallus episodically and not in clear chronological order,under the year 
26 b.c. : his account of the procedure (53, 23, 7) is also vague — koX 7) ytpovalu drraaa 
aXwvai re avrov eV rots' htKa.or 7 )ploL$ ko. 1 <j>vyeZv rrjs ovatas orep7]0cvra kcll ravrrji> 
re rco Avyovorw hoOijvat Kal iavrov 9 fiovdvrrjcrat eipptfiicjaro . 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66 , 2: ‘ob ingratum et malivolum anirnum’; Dio 
53 > 23. 5 (statues and pyramids). 

4 ILS 8995, lb 4 ff.: ‘exercitu ultra Nili catarhacte[n transdjucto, in quern locum 
neque populo | Romano neque regibus Aegypti [arma ante s]unt prolata, Thebaide, 
cum muni omn[i]|um regum formidine, subacta.’ 

4482 , 



310 DUX 

Octavianus could tolerate misdemeanour, crime or vice in his 
associates, providing that his own supremacy was not assailed. 
The precise nature of Callus’ violation of amicitia evades conjec¬ 
ture: 1 it was hardly trivial or verbal, for Suetonius ranks his fall 
with that of Salvidienus. Octavianus praised the pietas of the 
Senate and deplored the death of a friend. 2 

Callus may have been recalled from Egypt in 28 B.c. With 
the proconsul of Macedonia no link is known, save that each was 
once a partisan of Antonius. 3 Who had not been ? Neither Callus 
nor Crassus is even mentioned by the loyal historian Velleius 
Paterculus, hence all the more reason to revive suppressed dis¬ 
cordances in a fraudulently harmonious account of the restoration 
of Republican government at Rome. 

The denial to Crassus of the title of impcrator was not merely a 
matter of constitutional propriety—or rather, impropriety. Crassus 
was a noble, from a great house, the grandson of a dynast who 
had taken rank with Pompeius and Caesar; in military glory he was 
a sudden rival to the new Romulus, who tried to engross and con¬ 
centrate on his own person all prestige and success in war, as an 
almost religious consecration of the rule of the sole imperator d 
Not only prestige was at stake—the armed proconsuls were a 
menace. Yet it would be inexpedient to remove them all. Octa¬ 
vianus decided upon a half-measure. 

Under the rule of the Triumvirate, and after its nominal 
decease, proconsuls had governed large provinces, taken im- 
peratorial acclamations and celebrated triumphs. Octavianus 
would now remove the proconsuls from the more powerful of the 
military provinces and control these regions directly himself, with 
proconsular imperium . For the rest, proconsuls might govern, in 
appearance unhindered. Some would have military provinces in 
their charge, about which due foresight w r ou!d be exercised—few 
legions for garrison, proconsuls of new r families rather than noble, 
and praetorian rather than consular in rank; and no imperatorial 
salutations, no triumphs, if it could be helped. The nobilis and 
the consular, those were the enemies. 

1 Ovid (Amores 3, 9, 63) describes the offence as ‘temcrati crimen amici’. Gallus 
may, after all, have been simply sacrificed to conciliate the feelings of a powerful body 
of senators. 2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66, 2. 

1 A woman called ‘Licinia P. f. GaIJi (uxor)’ w r as buried in the sepulchre of the 
Crassi (CIL vi, 21308). She might be the first cousin of M. Licinius Crassus, cos 
30 B.c. It would be exceedingly rash to speculate on the identity of her husband 
Gallus: but a knight as powerful as C. Cornelius Gallus could easily take a wife 
from the noblest houses in Rome. 

4 On this topic see above all J. Gage, Rev. hist, clxxi (1933), 1 ff. 



DUX 3 n 

A settlement that yielded certain provinces of the Empire, 
nominally uncontrolled, but left the more important, deprived of 
proconsuls, under the immediate rule of Octavianus presented 
a fair show of restored liberty, and resigned nothing of value. 
Ostensible moderation was only a step to greater consolidation 
of power. And of power, no surrender. Only words and forms 
were changed, and not all of them. 

As ‘dux’ the young Caesar had fought the war under the 
national mandate, and ‘dux’ he remained, though the appellation 
gradually faded from use. Yet he might have kept it, whatever 
the form of the constitution and legal definition of his powers. 
The term ‘dux’ was familiar from its application to the great 
generals of the Republic; and the victor of Actium was the last 
and the greatest of them all. It could also fit a political leader— 
duxpartium . But warfare and party politics were deemed to beover 
and gone. The word had too military a flavour for all palates: it 
would be expedient to overlay the hard and astringent pill of 
supreme power with some harmless flavouring that smacked of 
tradition and custom. The military leader wished to be known 
as a magistrate. An appellation that connoted eminence, but not 
always sole primacy, was ready to hand. The leading statesmen 
of the Republic had commonly been called principes, in recognition 
of their authority or their power. 1 The name was not always given 
in praise, for the princeps was all too often a political dynast, 
exerting illicit power, or ‘potentia’, for personal rule: 2 ‘principa¬ 
ls’ also acquired the force and meaning of ‘dominatus’. 3 

Caesar’s heir came to use the term ‘princeps’, but not as part of 
any official titulature. There were other principes in the State, 
there could not fail to be such in a Republic. So Horace addresses 
him, 

maxime principum. 4 

This convenient appellation for the holder of vague and tremen¬ 
dous powers did not make its way all at once. Princeps remained 
also and very truly Dux , as the poetical literature of the earliest 
years of the new dispensation unequivocally reveals. Rightly, for 
the martial glory and martial primacy of the new Romulus was 
not impaired by the public acts of his sixth and seventh con¬ 
sulates. 

1 A. Gwosdz, Der Begriff des romischen princeps , Diss. BresJau, 1933; H. Wagen- 
v °c> r t, Philologus xci (1936), 206 ff.; 323 ff. 

2 Cicero, De re publica 1, 68: ‘ex nimia potentia principum.’ 

3 Cicero, Phil. 11, 36: ‘dominatum ct principatum.’ 4 Odes 4, 14, 6. 



312 DUX 

The word ‘princeps’, as applied to Augustus, is absent from the 
Aeneid of Virgil and is not of very common occurrence in the 
first three books of the Odes of Horace (which appeared in 23 B.C.). 
Propertius uses it but once, ‘dux’, however, at least twice. 1 As late 
as the publication of the last book of the Odes (13 b.c.) the ruler 
of Rome can still be called ‘dux’—but with a difference and with 
the appendage of a benevolent and unmilitary adjective, ‘dux 
bone!’ 2 Even later Ovid, when writing his Fasti , discovered in the 
word ‘dux’ a convenience that was not merely a matter of metre. 3 
Then, after a century, under the dynasty of the Flavians, an 
Emperor distrustful of the title of ‘princeps’ and eager for warlike 
glory was flattered when his poets called him ‘dux’ and ‘ductor’. 4 

So much for Rome, the governing classes and Italy. But even in 
Italy, the Princeps by his use of ‘imperator’ as a part of his name 
recalled his Caesarian and military character; and he ruled the 
provinces with an authority familiar to them as proconsular and 
absolute, whether it resided upon the dictatorial powers of the 
Triumvirate, pure usurpation, or act of law at Rome. To translate 
the term ‘princeps’ Greeks employed a word that meant ‘dux'. 5 

1 Propertius 2, io, 4 (military); 16, 20 (combined with a reference to the ‘casa 
Romuli’). 

2 Odes 4, 5, 5. 

A Fasti 1, 613; 2, 60; 5, 145; 6, 92. Nor is this merely, as might he expected, 
with definite reference to the victories or to the power of Augustus. } Us attention 
to ancient monuments is described as ‘sacrati provida cura dueis’ ( Fasti 2, 60). 

4 The frequency of these appellations in the Silvar of Statius deserves record. 

5 Namely rJye/Aujc. On the propriety of this term for the ruler of the eastern 
lands, cf. now E. Kornemann, Ktio xxxi (1938), 81 ff. 



XXII. PRINCEPS 


I N his sixth and seventh consulates C. Julius Caesar Octavianus 
went through a painless and superficial transformation. The 
process was completed in a session of the Senate on January 13th, 
27 B.C., when he solemnly announced that he resigned all powers 
and all provinces to the free disposal of the Senate and People of 
Rome. Acclamation was drowned in protest. The senators ad¬ 
jured him not to abandon the Commonwealth which he had 
preserved. Yielding with reluctance to these manifestations of 
loyalty and patriotism, the master of the whole world consented 
to assume a special commission for a period of ten years, in the 
form of proconsular authority over a large provincia , namely 
Spain, Gaul and Syria. That and nothing more. 1 For the rest, 
proconsuls were to govern the provinces, as before, but respon¬ 
sible only to the Senate; and Senate, People and magistrates were 
to resume the rightful exercise of all their functions. 

Three days later the Senate again met, eager and impatient to 
render thanks, to confer honours upon the saviour of the State. 
They voted that a wreath of laurel should be placed above the 
door-post of his dwelling, for he had saved the lives of Roman 
citizens; that in the Senate should be hung a golden shield with 
his virtues inscribed thereon, clemency, valour, justice and piety. 2 
He had founded or was soon to found—the Roman State anew. 
He might therefore have been called Romulus, for the omen of 
twelve vultures had greeted him long ago. 3 But Romulus was a 
king, hated name, stained with a brother’s blood and himself killed 
by Roman senators, so one legend ran, before his assumption 

' Dio 53, 12 ff. (not quite satisfactory on the division of the provinces, see below, 
p. 314). Dio does not explicitly mention a grant of proconsular imperium. That 
such there was, however, is clear enough. Premerstein (Vow Werdcn und Wcsen 
dcs Prinzipats , 229 ff.) follows Mommsen and assumes that it carried imperium 
maws over the provinces of the Senate. Which is by no means necessary, cf. W. 
Kolbe, in the volume Aus Roms Zeitzvendc (Das Erbe der Alten } Heft xx, 1931), 
49 ff-, esp. 47 f. According to Dio (53, 12,1) Augustus took over rr]v /xee (f>poi'rlba 
T1 I 1 ’ r € rrpoaraalav run' kolvwv ndcrav nal eVqxeAetay nro? beopev un f . From 
this Premerstein deduces a definite grant by the Senate of a general ‘cura rei 
publicaeXo.c., 120 ff.). That Augustus exercised such a supervision there is no doubt 
--but in virtue of his auctoritas . Augustus’ own words (Res Gestae 6) tell against 
this theory. 

z Res Gestae 34, cf. 1 LS 82 (a copy at Potentia in Piccnum). 

1 Dio says that Augustus himself was eager for the name of Romulus (53, 16, 7). 
Perhaps he was warned and checked by wise counsellors. 



3 i4 PRINCEPS 

into Heaven. That was too much like Caesar the Dictator. More¬ 
over, the young Caesar was a saviour and benefactor beyond any 
precedent. A new name was devised, expressing veneration of more 
than mortal due. 1 A veteran politician, the consular L. Muna- 
tius Plancus, proposed the decree that conferred on Caesar’s heir 
the appellation of Augustus. 2 

Nothing was left to chance or to accident in preparing these 
exemplary manifestations. The ruler had taken counsel with his 
friends and allies—and perhaps with neutral politicians. They 
knew what they were about. In name, in semblance and in theory 
the sovranty of Senate and People had been restored. It remains 
to discover what it all amounted to. 

On the face of things, the new powers of Caesar Augustus were 
modest indeed, unimpeachable to a generation that knew Dictator¬ 
ship and Triumvirate. By consent, for merit achieved and for 
service expected, the Senate invested "he first citizen with rank 
and authority. Caesar Augustus was to govern a provincia in virtue 
of imperium proconsulare: as proconsul, he was merely the equal 
in public law of any other proconsul. In fact, his province was 
large and formidable, comprising the most powerful of the mili¬ 
tary territories of the Empire and the majority of the legions; 
and Egypt stood apart from the reckoning. 

But Augustus did not take all the legions: three proconsuls had 
armies under their command, the governors of Illyricum, Mace¬ 
donia and Africa. 3 These regions were close to Italy, a menace 
from geographical position and the memory of recent civil wars: 
yet Augustus graciously resigned them to proconsuls. Further, 
Cisalpine Gaul had ceased to be a province. Augustus’ own armies 
lay at a distance, disposed on the periphery of the Empire—no 
threat, it might seem, to a free constitution, but merely guardians 
of the frontiers. Nor need the new system be described as a mili¬ 
tary despotism. Before the law, Augustus was not the commander- 
in-chief of the whole army, but a Roman magistrate, invested with 
special powers for a term of years. 

1 Dio 53, 16, 8 : cos' koI ttXclov tl rj kclt’ av6pw7rovs a>v. Cf. Ovid, Fasti i, 609 ff. 
Romulus founded Rome ‘augusto augurio’ (Ennius, quoted by Varro, RR 3, 1, 2). 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 7, 2. 

3 Dio’s account is anachronistic and misleading. He states that Augustus re¬ 
signed to the Senate the peaceful provinces (53, 12, 2, cf. 13, 1): yet in his list of 
such provinces occur Africa, Illyricum and Macedonia, where armed proconsuls 
are definitely attested in the early years of the Principate. Nor is the information 
provided by the contemporary Strabo (p. 840) free of anachronism. He says that 
Augustus took as his portion ocnj arpaTuoTLKrjs (f>povpa$ ^pctav. See further 
below, p. 326. 



PRINCEPS 315 

For the grant of such a mandate there was plenty of justification. 
The civil wars were over, but the Empire had not yet recovered 
from their ravages. Spain, a vast land, had not been properly con¬ 
quered ; Gaul cried out for survey and organization; Syria, distant 
from Rome and exposed to the Parthians, required careful super¬ 
vision. Other regions in turn might be subjected to the same 
salutary treatment, for nobody could believe that the frontiers of 
lllyricum and Macedonia were satisfactory; and Africa nourished 
her proverbial wars. 

Special commands were no novelty, no scandal. The strictest 
champion of constitutional propriety might be constrained to 
concede their necessity. 1 If the grant of extended imperium in 
the past had threatened the stability of the State, that was due to 
the ruinous ambition of politicians who sought power illegally 
and held it for glory and for profit. Rival dynasts rent the 
Empire apart and destroyed the Free State. Their sole survivor, 
as warden of the more powerful of the armed provinces, stood as 
a guarantee against any recurrence of the anarchy out of which 
his domination had arisen. 

But Augustus was to be consul as well as proconsul, year after 
year without a break. The supreme magistracy, though pur¬ 
porting no longer to convey enhanced powers, as after the end of 
the Triumvirate, still gave him the means to initiate and direct 
public policy at Rome if not to control through consular imperium 
the proconsuls abroad. 2 For such cumulation of pow r ers a close 
parallel from the recent past might properly have been invoked: 
it is pretty clear that it was not. 

The Romans as a people were possessed by an especial venera¬ 
tion for authority, precedent and tradition, by a rooted distaste of 
change unless change could be shown to be in harmony with 
ancestral custom, ‘mos maiorum'—which in practice meant the 
sentiments of the oldest living senators. Lacking any perception 
of the dogma of progress—for it had not yet been invented—the 
Romans regarded novelty with distrust and aversion. The word 
‘novus' had an evil ring. Yet the memory of the past reminded 
the Romans that change had come, though slow and combated. 
Rome's peculiar greatness was due not to one man's genius or to 

1 Cicero, Phil. 11, 17, cf. 28. 

2 Augustus claimed to have exercised no more potestas than any of his colleagues 
in magistracy (Res Gestae 34). An enigmatic statement, but elucidated by Premer- 
stein (Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats , 227), who demonstrates that after 
27 b.c. the consulate was reduced to its due and constitutional powers, cf. Velleius 
2 > **9, 3: ‘imperium magistratuum ad pristinum redactum modum.’ 



316 PRINCEPS 

one age, but to many men and the long process of time. 1 Augus¬ 
tus sought to demonstrate a doctrine—Roman history was a con¬ 
tinuous and harmonious development. 2 

Augustus himself, so he asserted, accepted no magistracy that 
ran contrary to the ‘mos maiorum\ 3 He did not need to. As it 
stood, the Roman constitution would serve his purpose well 
enough. It is, therefore, no paradox to discover in the Principate 
of Augustus both the institutions and the phraseology of Repub¬ 
lican Rome. The historical validity of the inferences thence 
derived is another question. 

It will be doubted whether Augustus, his counsellors or his 
critics scanned the records of the past with so anxious an eye 
for legal precedents as have the lawyers and historians of more 
recent times. Augustus knew precisely what he wanted: it 
was simple and easily translated. Moreover, the chief men of 
his party were not jurists or theorists—they were diplomats, 
soldiers, engineers and financiers. The study of law, the art 
of casuistry and the practice of public debate had languished for 
long years. 

Certain precedents of the recent past were so close as to be 
damaging. Pompeius Magnus governed Spain in absence through 
his legates. At the same time he acquired a quasi-dictatorial 
position in Rome as consul for the third time (52 B.C.), at first 
without a colleague, under a mandate to heal and repair the body 
politic. 4 But Pompeius was sinister and ambitious. That prin- 
ceps did not cure, but only aggravated, the ills of the Roman 
State. Very different was Augustus, a 4 salubris princeps*, for as 
such he would have himself known. 5 

Not only that. The whole career of Pompeius was violent and 
illicit, from the day when the youth of twenty-three raised a 
private army, through special commands abroad and political 
compacts at home, devised to subvert or suspend the constitu¬ 
tion, down to his third consulate and the power he held by force 

1 Cicero, Dc re publica 2, 2: ‘nostra autem res publica non unius esset ingenio, 
sed multorum, nec una hominis vita, sed aliquot constituta saeculis et aetatibus/ 

2 Res Gestae 8: ‘lcgibus novis m(e auctore Ijatis m[ulta ejxempla maiorum exo- 

lescentia | iarn ex nostro [saeculjo rcd[uxi et ipse] multarum rer[um exe]mpla 
imi|tanda pos[teris tradidij.’ 3 lb. 6. 

4 Appian, BC 2, 28, 107: eV depaireiav rrjs 7roAetu? cf. Plutarch, Pom¬ 

peius 55; Tacitus, Ami. 3, 28. 

s Suetonius, Divus Aug. 42, 1 : ‘ut salubrem magis quam ambitiosum principem 
scires’; cf. Dio 56, 39, 2: cocrrrep rt? larpos ayaOos crdtpLci vevocnjKOS napaXa^cuv teal 
c^iacrdfAcvos aTreStoKi irdvra vpLiv iryid iroiTjoas (from the funeral oration delivered 
by Tiberius). 



PRINCEPS 317 

and lost in war. 1 His murders and his treacheries were not for¬ 
gotten/ 

It would not do to revive such memories, save by covert 
apology, or when an official historian sought to refute Sallustius. 
The tone of literature in the Augustan age is certainly Pompeian 
rather than Caesarian, just as its avowed ideals are Republican, 
not absolutist. Seeking to establish continuity with a legitimate 
government, Caesar’s heir forswore the memory of Caesar: in. 
the official conception, the Dictatorship and the Triumvirate 
were blotted from record. 3 This meant a certain rehabilitation of 
the last generation of the Republic, which in politics is the Age 
of Pompeius. In his youth Caesar’s heir, the revolutionary 
adventurer, won Pompeian support by guile and coolly betrayed 
his allies, overthrowing the Republic and proscribing the Repub¬ 
licans: in his mature years the statesman stole their heroes and 
their vocabulary. 

Livy was moved to grave doubts—w r as the birth of Caesar a 
blessing or a curse ? 4 Augustus twitted him with being a Pompei¬ 
an. 5 The Emperor and his historian understood each other. The 
authentic Pompeius w r as politically forgotten, buried in fraudu¬ 
lent laudations of the dead. What they required was not the 
ambitious and perfidious dynast but that Pompeius who had fallen 
as Caesar’s enemy, as a champion of the Free State against mili¬ 
tary despotism. Virgil in the Aeneid , when he matched the rival 
leaders, made Aeneas’ guide exhort Caesar to disarm before 
Pompeius: 

tuque prior, tu paree, genus qui ducis Olympo, 
proice tela manu, sanguis meus! b 

Save for that veiled rebuke, no word of Caesar in all the epic 
record of Rome’s glorious past. Following an inspired vision of 
recent history, the shield of Aeneas allows a brief glimpse of the 
future life, on the one side Catilina in hell, tormented by furies 
for ever, on the other an ideal Cato, usefully legislating among the 
blessed dead: 

secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem. 7 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 28: ‘turn Cn. Pompeius, tertium consul corrigendis moribus 
delectus et gravior remediis quam delicta erant suarumque legum auctor idem ac 
subversor, quae armis tuebatur armis amisit.’ 

1 ‘Adulesccntulus carnifex ’ (Val. Max. 6, 2, 8, cf. above, p. 27). 

1 Tacitus, in his history of legislation (Ann. 3, 28), passes at once from 52 b.c. 
to 28 b.c. In between, ‘non mos, non ius.’ 4 Seneca, NQ 5, 18, 4. 

5 Tacitus, Ann. 4. 34, on the interpretation of which, cl. yR*Sxxvill (1938),:!25. 

6 Aen. 6, 834 f. ‘ 7 lb. 8, 670. 



318 PRINCEPS 

Virgil did not need to say where Caesar belonged—with his 
revolutionary ally or with the venerable adversary whose memory 
he had traduced after death. Again, Horace in the Odes omits 
all mention of Caesar the Dictator. Only th cjulium sidus is there 
—the soul of Caesar, purged of all earthly stain, transmuted into 
a comet and lending celestial auspices to the ascension of Caesar’s 
heir. 1 

The picture is consistent. Livy, Virgil and Horace of all 
Augustan writers stand closest to the government. On the whole, 
better to say nothing of Caesar, or for that matter of Antonius, 
save as criminal types. The power and domination of Augustus 
was in reality far too similar to that of the Dictator to stand even 
a casual reminder, let alone pointed and genuine comparison. The 
claims of Divus Julius , the glories of Trojan descent and the 
obsession with Romulus, prevalent for some years in the after- 
math of Actium, gradually recede and lose ground just as the 
victory itself, on quieter reflection an uncomfortable matter, is no 
longer fervently advertised. 

A purified Pompeius or a ghostly and sanctified Cato were not 
the only victims of the Civil Wars who could be called up and 
enlisted in the service of the revived Republic. Cicero might be 
more remunerative for every purpose; and the blame of his pro¬ 
scription was profitably laid upon Antonius, dead and disgraced. 
Augustus bore testimony: ‘Cicero was a great orator—and a great 
patriot.’ 2 But any official cult of Cicero was an irony to men who 
recalled in their own experience—it was not long ago—the political 
activity of Cicero in the last year of his life. The smooth Plancus 
no doubt acquiesced, adding his voice to the chorus. Pollio, the 
other ex-Antonian and former public enemy, still nursed his 
resentment against Cicero’s character and Cicero’s style; and 
Pollio detested Plancus. 

That much more than the memory and the oratory of Cicero 
was revived some fifteen years after his death has been maintained 
by scholars alert to investigate the history of ideas and institu¬ 
tions—his whole conception of the Roman State triumphed after 
his death, receiving form and shape in the New Republic of 
Caesar Augustus. 3 

That would be comforting, if true. It only remains to elucidate 

1 Odes i, 12, 47. 2 Plutarch, Cicero 49. 

3 For example, and above all, E. Meyer, Caesars Monarchic u. das Principat dcs 
Pompejus ' (1922), i74ff. On Ciceronian language and ideas reborn in Augustus, 
cf. A. Oltramare, Rev. it. lat. x (1932), 58 ff. 



PRINCEPS 319 

the political doctrine of Cicero. In the years of failure and de¬ 
jection he composed a treatise, namely De re publica , in which 
Scipio Aemilianus and certain of his friends hold debate about 
the ‘optimus status civitatis\ The character and purpose of this 
work have been variously, Svimetimes extravagantly, estimated: 
Cicero’s Republic has even been regarded as a tract for the times, 
recommending the establishment of the Principate of Pompeius, 
and foreshadowing the ideal state that was realized under the 
Principate of Augustus. 1 That is an anachronism: the theorists 
of antiquity situated their social and political Utopias in the past, 
not in the future. It is a more convincing view that Cicero, in 
despair and longing, wrote of an ideal commonwealth that had 
once existed, the Rome of the Scipiones, with the balanced and 
ordered constitution that excited the admiration of Polybius: 2 
even if the primacy of one man in the State were admitted, it was 
not for a princeps like Pompeius. 

For the rest, it might pertinently be urged that the political 
doctrine of Cicero was couched in phrases so vague and so in¬ 
nocuous that it could be employed by any party and adapted to any 
ends. The revolutionary Augustus exploited with art and with 
success the traditional concepts and the consecrated vocabulary 
of Roman political literature, much of it, indeed, in no way 
peculiar to Cicero: the speeches of his peers and rivals have all 
perished. That being so, the resurgence of phrases, and even of 
ideas, that w r ere current in the previous generation will neither 
evoke surprise nor reveal to a modern inquirer any secret about 
the rule of Augustus which was hidden from contemporaries. 

In so far as Cicero had a political programme, he advocated the 
existing order, reformed a little by a return to ancient practices, 
but not changed, namely the firm concord of the propertied 
classes and the traditional distinction in function and standing 
between the different classes of society. 3 Such was also the 


1 E. Meyer, Caesars Monarchie, 174 ff.; R. Reitzenstein, GGN 1917, 399ff-*> 
Hermes Lix (1924), 356 ff. 

2 Above, p. 144, cf. R. Heinze, Hermes lix (1924), 73 ff. Votti Geist des 
Rbmertums, 142 ff. For a brief, clear and admirable account of the controversy, 
A. v. Premerstein, Vom lYerden und Wesen des Prinzipats, 3-12. 

3 Cicero professes in De legihus (3, 4, cf. 12) to be legislating for the state depicted 
in the Republic. The traditional constitution of Rome barely requires modification- 
quae res cum saprentissime moderatissimeque constituta esset a maioribus nostris, 
nihilhabui sane,non(modo) multum,quod putarem novandum in legihus’(ib. 3,12). 
In fact, the changes he proposes are few and modest, little more than coercion of 
tribunes and more power for the Senate and for censors: not irrelevant to Cicero’s 
own past experience and future hopes. 



3 20 PRJNCEPS 

opinion of Augustus, for the Revolution had now been stabilized. 
Neither the Princeps nor any of his adherents desired change and 
disturbance. Well might he say, when asked his verdict on Cato, 
that anybody who does not wish the present dispensation to be 
altered is a good citizen. 1 Precisely for that end Augustus laboured, 
to conserve the new order, announcing it as his dearest wish to be 
known as the ‘optimi status auctor’. 2 He called it the ‘optimus 
status’ himself: the writer who has transmitted these unexcep¬ 
tionable observations goes on to speak of a ‘novus status’. 3 The 
Princeps would never have denied it. 

Only ghosts and words were called up to comfort the living and 
confound posterity. In the New State of Augustus the stubborn 
class-conscious Republicanism of Cato or of Brutus would not 
have found a secure haven. The uncontrolled liber fas or ferocia 
of Pollio came as a verbal reminder of that tradition. Pollio, it is 
true, was preserved as a kind of privileged nuisance—he was not 
the man to advocate assassination or provoke civil war for the 
sake of a principle. The authentic Cato, however, was not merely 
‘ferox’ but ‘atrox’. 4 His nephew Brutus, who proclaimed a firm 
determination to fight to the end against any power that set itself 
above the laws, w r ould have known the true name and essence of 
the aucturitas of Augustus the Princeps. Nor was Brutus a good 
imperialist. As he pronounced when he attacked the domination 
of Pompeius, for the sake of empire it was not worth submitting 
to tyranny. 5 6 

Cicero refused to admit that freedom could exist even under 
a constitutional monarchy/’ But Cicero might have changed, 


1 Quoted by Macrobius (2, 4, 18): ‘quisquis praesentem statum civitatis com- 
mutari non volet, ct civis et vir bonus est.’ Plutarch (Pompeius 54) describes Cato 
in 52 B.C. as rracr ae /zee d/r^r/e /xaAAoe aipovfitvos dvapylas. Compare Dio, in a 
speech put into the mouth of Augustus (53, 10, 1): 7 rpwrov /zee roi)? zcei/zeVoizs' 
ed/zoi>9 Ltj)(vp<jjs <f>v \drrere kgl'l /z 7 | 8 eVa clvtujv pLtTafldA-qre. rd yap e’e ravreu /xeVoera, 
Kav x e ^P w fh wp,<f)opajTcpa ran• aei KUieoro/xoiz/xeeaze, Kav /SeAriaz efeaz boKrj, ccrrlv. 

2 An edict, quoted by Suetonius ( Divus Aug. 28, 2): ‘ita mihi salvam ac sospitem 
rem p. sistere in sua sede hceat, atquc eius rci fructum percipere, quern peto, ut 
optimi status auctor dicar, et moriens ut feram mecum spem, mansura in vestigio 
suo fundamenta rei p. quae ieccro.’ 

3 lb.: ‘fecitque ipse se compotem voti, nisus omni modo, ne quern novi status 
paeniterct.’ On the meaning and use of ‘status’, cf. E. Kostermann, Rh. M. lxxxvi 
(1937), 225 ff. 

4 Horace, Odes 2, i, 23 f.: ‘et cuncta terrarum subacta | praeter atrocem animum 
Catonis.’ 


5 Quoted by Quintilian (9, 3, 95): ‘praestat enim nemini imperare quam alicui 
servire: sine illo enim vivere honeste licet, cum hoc vivendi nulla condicio est.’ 

6 De re publica 2, 43: ‘libertas, quae non in eo est ut iusto utamur domino, sed 
ut nullo.’ 



PRINCEPS 321 

pliable to a changed order. So Brutus thought. 1 * In the New 
State, which was quite different from Dictatorship, Cicero would 
be honoured by Princeps and Senate for his eloquence, consulted 
for his advice on weighty matters—and never tempted by ambi¬ 
tion into danger. He could afford in the magnanimity of success 
to pass over the scorn of the nobiles; he would not be harried by 
tribunes or constrained to speak in defence of political adven¬ 
turers and ministers of despotism. There were none of them 
left—they had all joined the national government. Cicero would 
easily have proved to himself and to others that the new order 
was the best state of all, more truly Republican than any Republic, 
for it derived from consensus Italiae and concordia ordinum\ it 
commended itself to all good citizens, for it asserted the sacred 
rights of property; it was Roman and Republican, for power 
rested upon the laws, with every class in the Commonwealth 
keeping to traditional functions and respecting legitimate autho¬ 
rity. True libertas was very different from licence: imperium was 
indispensable. What fairer blend of libertas and imperium could 
have been discovered ? A champion of the ‘higher legality' should 
find no quarrel with a rigid law of high treason. 

It is time to turn from words and theories. Only a robust faith 
can discover authentic relics of Cicero in the Republic of Augus¬ 
tus:- very little attention was paid to him at all, or to Pompeius. 
Genuine Pompeians there still were, loyal to a family and a cause 
— but that was another matter. Insistence upon the legal basis 
of Augustus' powers, on precedents in constitutional practice or 
anticipations in political theory can only lead to schematism and 
a dreary delusion. Augustus proudly dispensed with support of 
precedents—he claimed to be unique. Romans instructed in a 
long tradition of law and government did not need to take lessons 
from theorists or from aliens. 3 4 

Vain trouble and fruitless search for dim pedigrees to discover 
in Augustus' supremacy the ultimate expression of a doctrine 
first formulated by Stoic philosophers, the rule of the ‘best 
citizenV Only a votary of truth turned courtier and flatterer 


1 Ad M. Brut urn 1, 17, 4 (above, p. 138). 

“ Wilamowitz disposed of the question in a brief footnote (Der Glaube der 
Ht lie tic 11 n, 428 n.). 

3 Supio held the ancient constitution to be far the best (De re publica 1, 34); 
and he was not altogether satisfied with the speculations of the wisest of the Greeks 
Ob., 36). 

4 W. Weber (CAH xr, 367) alleges that Augustus had conceived the idea ol the 
rule of the ‘optimus civis* from Panaetius through Cicero. 



322 PRINCEPS 

would pretend that internecine war and the proscription of ‘boni 
viri’ could ever produce an exemplary kind of citizen. Names 
might change: Augustus was none the less a revolutionary leader 
who won supreme power through civil war. All that he needed 
from Cicero he had got long ago, in the War of Mutina. In politics 
his mentors had been Philippus and Balbus. To retain power, 
however, he must base his rule upon general consent, the support 
of men of property and the active co-operation of the governing 
class. To that end, he modified the forms of the constitution to 
fit his policy, his policy to harmonize with Roman sentiment. 
The formulation was easily found—it reposed not in books of the 
law or abstract speculation, but in the situation itself. 

Beyond and above all legal and written prescription stands 
auctoritas ; it was in virtue of auctoritas that Augustus claimed 
pre-eminence for himself. 1 Auctoritas denotes the influence that 
belonged, not by law but by custom of the Roman constitution, 
to the whole Senate as a body and to the individual senior states¬ 
men or principes viri . 2 Augustus was the greatest of the principes. 
It was therefore both appropriate and inevitable that the un¬ 
official title by which he chose to be designated was ‘princeps’. 
Auctoritas has a venerable and imposing sound: unfriendly critics 
would call it ‘potentia’. 

Yet the combination of auctoritas and legally granted powers 
does not exhaust the count. His rule was personal—and based 
ultimately upon a personal oath of allegiance rendered by Rome, 
Italy and the West in 32 b.c., subsequently by the other regions 
of the Empire. 3 Caesar Augustus possessed indefinite and tremen¬ 
dous resources, open or secret—all that the principes in the last 
generation held, but now stolen from them and enhanced to an 
exorbitant degree; and he was Divifilius, destined for consecration 
in his turn. The plebs of Rome was Caesar’s inherited clientela. 
He fed them with doles, amused them with games and claimed 
to be their protector against oppression. Free elections returned 
—that is to say, a grateful people would unfailingly elect the 
candidates whom Caesar in his wisdom had chosen, with or with¬ 
out formal commendation. He controlled all the armies of the 
Roman People, in fact though not in law, and provided from his 
own pocket the bounty for the legionaries when they retired from 

1 Res Gestae 34: post id tem[pus ajuctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potes|t]atis 
au[tem njihilo ampliu[s habuji quam cet[eri qui mjihi quo|que in ma[gisjtra[t]u 
conlegae f[uerunt]. 

2 R. Heinze, Hermes lx (1925), 348 ff. Vom Geist des Rdmertums, 1 ff. 

3 Above, p. 284. 



PRINCEPS 323 

service. Augustus was by far the wealthiest man in the Empire, 
ruling Egypt as a king and giving account of it to no man; he 
coined in gold and silver in the provinces; and he spent his 
money with ostentation and for power. The military colonies in 
Italy and abroad were a network of his armed and devoted 
garrisons. Towns in Italy and the provinces knew him as their 
founder or their patron, kings, tetrarchs and dynasts over the 
wide empire were in his portion as allies and clients. A citizen 
and a magistrate to the senators, he was imperator to the legions, 
a king and a god to the subject populations. Above all, he stood 
at the head of a large and well organized political party as the 
source and fount of patronage and advancement. 

Such was Caesar Augustus. The contrast of real and personal 
power with the prerogatives of consul or proconsul as legally 
defined appears portentous and alarming. Yet it would be an 
elementary error to fancy that the ceremony of January 13th was 
merely a grim comedy devised to deceive the ingenuous or in¬ 
timidate the servile. On the contrary, the purified Senate, being 
in a majority the partisans of Augustus, were well aware of what 
was afoot. To secure the domination of the Caesarian party, the 
consolidation of the Revolution and the maintenance of peace, 
it was necessary that the primacy of Caesar’s heir should be 
strengthened and perpetuated. Not, however, under the fatal 
name of dictator or monarch. 1 On all sides prevailed a con¬ 
spiracy of decent reticence about the gap between fact and 
theory'. It was evident: no profit but only danger from talking 
about it. The Principate baffles definition. 

The ‘constitutional’ settlement of the years 28 and 27 B.c. was 
described in official language as ‘res publica reddita’ or ‘res 
publica restituta’; and certain Roman writers echoed the official 
description. Not so Tacitus—in his brief account of Augustus’ 
feigned moderation and stealthy aggrandizement after the Civil 
Wars he has not deigned to allude to this transaction at all. 2 In 
truth, it may be regarded merely as the legalization, and therefore 
the strengthening, of despotic power. Such at least was the con¬ 
ception of Tacitus when he referred elsewhere to the legislation 
of 28 b.c. —he speaks of‘pax et princeps’; 3 others would have said 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,9: ‘non regno tamen neque dictatura sed principis nomine 
constitutam rem publicam.’ 

2 lb. 1, 2: ‘posito triumviri nomine consulem se ferens et ad tuendam plebem 
(ribunicio iure contentum, ubi militem donis, populum annona, cunctos dulcedine 
otii pellexit, insurgere paullatim’ &c. 

i lb. 3, 28: ‘sexto demum consulatu Caesar Augustus, potentiae sccurus, quae 



324 PRINCEPS 

‘pax et dominus’. A later historian dates from this ‘constitutional’ 
settlement the beginning of a strict monarchical rule; he observed 
that the pay of Augustus’ military guard was doubled at the same 
time—and that in virtue of the Senate’s decree. 1 

The significance of the measure could be grossly exaggerated 
by the adulatory or the uncritical. Such was no doubt the opinion 
of the suspicious Tacitus, ever alert for the contrast of name and 
substance. At Rome, it did not mark an era in dating; in the 
provinces it passed almost unnoticed. No change in the foreign 
or domestic policy of the government, in currency or in economic 
activity, indeed, the precise formulation of the powers of the 
military leader in the res publica which he sought to ‘establish 
upon a lasting basis’ is not a matter of paramount importance. 

No man of the time,reared among the hard and palpable realities 
of Roman politics, could have been deceived. The Princeps 
speaks of a restoration of the Republic, and the historian Velleius 
Paterculus renders an obedient echo of inspired guidance— 
‘prisca ilia et antiqua rei publicae forma revocata.’ 2 The words 
have a venerable and antiquarian ring. That is all; and that is 
enough to show them up. Suetonius, however, a student of 
antiquities, was a scholar not wholly devoid of historical sense. 
He states that Augustus twice thought of restoring the Republic 
—not that he did so. 3 To Suetonius, the work of Augustus was 
the creation of a ‘novus status’. 4 

From a distance the prospect is fairer. It has been maintained 
in recent times that Augustus not only employed Republican 
language but intended that the Republican constitution should 
operate unhampered—and that it did, at least in the earlier years 
of his presidency. 5 Augustus’ purpose was just the reverse. He 
controlled government and patronage, especially the consulate, 
precisely after the manner of earlier dynasts, but with more 
thoroughness and without opposition. 'Phis time the domination 
of a faction was to be permanent and unshaken: the era of rival 
military leaders had closed. 6 

triumviratu iusserat abolcvit deditque iura quis pace et principe uteremur. acriora 
ex eo vincula.’ 

1 I)io 53, ii, 5; cf. 53, 17, 1: kcjlI an' avrov teat aKpifirjs fxovapgia Karearri . 
Cf also 52, i,i. 2 Velleius 2, 89, 4. 

3 Dtvus Aug. 28, 1. 4 lb. 2, cf. above, p. 320. 

s E. Meyer, Hist. Zeitsthr. xn (1903), 385 ff. Kl. St hr. l \ 423 ft. ; (>. Eerrero, 
The Greatness and Decline of Rome (E.T., 1907), passim ; F. B. Marsh, The Founding 
of the Roman Empire 2 (1931) ; M. Hammond, The Augustan Principate (1933). 

6 Dio 52, 1, 1. He calls the preceding epoch the age of the hvvacrrelai. Compare 
Appian, PC 1, 2 7. 



PRJNCEPS 325 

The choice of means did not demand deep thought or high 
debate in the party councils. Augustus took what he deemed 
necessary for his designs, the consulate and a group of military 
provinces. Definition of powers and extent of provincia might 
later be modified how and when he pleased. One thing could 
never change, the source and origin of his domination. 

When a faction seized power at Rome, the consulate and the 
provincial armies were the traditional instruments of ‘legitimate’ 
supremacy. No need to violate the laws: the constitution w r as 
subservient. This time the new enactments were carried through 
under the auspices of the supreme magistrates, Augustus and 
Agrippa. The transition to liberty was carefully safeguarded. 

It is an entertaining pursuit to speculate upon the subtleties 
of legal theory, or to trace from age to age the transmission of 
perennial maxims of political wisdom; it is more instructive to 
discover, in any time and under any system of government, the 
identity of the agents and ministers of power. That task has all 
too often been ignored or evaded. 

Augustus proposed himself to be consul without intermission. 
During the next four years his colleagues were T. Statilius Taurus, 
M. Junius Silanus, C. Norbanus Flaccus and the polyonymous 
A. Terentius Varro Murena. No doubt about any of these men, 
or at least no candidate hostile to the Princeps. Taurus stood 
second only to Agrippa as a soldier and an administrator: he had 
fought with the young leader in Sicily and in Illyricum, he had 
governed Africa and Spain, he had thrice been acclaimed imperator 
by the legions. 1 A second consulate was not the only reward of 
loyal service—he was granted in 30 B.c. the right of nominating 
each year one member of the board of praetors. 2 A noble, but 
none the less by now a firm member of the Caesarian party, was 
M. Junius Silanus, of a variegated past, changing in loyalty from 
Lepidus to Antonius, to Sex. Pompeius and again to Antonius, 
thence to the better cause. 3 The father of Norbanus had been 
general, along with Saxa, in the campaign of Philippi. Norbanus 
himself was married to a great heiress in the Caesarian party, 
the daughter of Cornelius Balbus. 4 As for Murena, he was the 
brother-in-law of Maecenas. 5 

1 ILS 893. 2 Dio 51, 23, 1. 

' Above, pp. 189 and 268. His son may have been married to a granddaughter 
of Cn. Domitius Calvinus, cf. PIR D 150. 

4 ClL vi, 16357, cf. PIR z y C 1474. 

5 The extraction and other connexions of this remarkable person are highly 
obscure (P-W v A, 706 ff.). Nor is his nomenclature constant. Yet it is pretty 



326 PRINCEPS 

So much for the consulate. In the manner of controlling the 
provinces the recent past could offer lessons, had Augustus stood 
in need of instruction. Reunited after the conference of Luca, 
Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar took a large share of provinces. 
From 55 b.c. they held Gaul, Cisalpine and Transalpine, Spain 
and Syria, with some twenty legions. The Cisalpina was no longer 
a province. Apart from that, Augustus’ portion was closely com¬ 
parable in extent and power. The settlement of 27 B.c. gave him 
for his provincia Spain, Gaul and Syria (with Syria went the small 
adjuncts of Cyprus and Cilicia Campestris)their garrison was 
a great army of twenty legions or more. In recent years these 
provinces had been governed by proconsuls, usually consular in 
rank. Thus all Spain, it appears, had been under one governor, 
with several legates as his subordinates. 2 

Provinces so large and so important called for proconsuls of 
consular rank, with a tenure longer than annual. That would be 
most unfortunate. 3 Among the ex-consuls were men dangerously 
eminent, from family or from ambition. Crassus was a recent 
warning. Triumviral-authority, succeeded by an enhanced con¬ 
sular imperium, had recently been employed to control the armed 
proconsuls. But the Triumvirate was abolished, the consulate 
reduced to normal and legitimate competence. The remedy was 
clear. 

Augustus in 27 b.c. professed to resign provinces to the Senate; 
and proconsuls remained, as before, in charge of three military 
provinces. But Augustus was not surrendering power. Very 
different his real purpose, disguised at the time and seldom sus¬ 
pected since—he wished to remove proconsuls from Spain, Gaul 
and Syria, becoming proconsul of all those regions himself. That 

clear that the consul of 23 b.c. ‘A. T[ercntius . . .] Vfarjrn Murena’ {OIL I 2 , p. 28) 
is the same person as the Terentius Varro in Dio (53, 25, 3) and Strabo (p. 205), 
and the Licinius Murena of Dio 54, 3, 3. Suetonius calls him 'Varro Murena’ 
(Divus Aug. iq, 1 ; Tib. 8), Velleius ‘L. Murena’ (2, 91, 2). Similarly, the ‘Murena’ 
of Horace, Odes 3, 19, 11 may be identified with the ‘Licinius’ of Odes 2, 10, 1. 
Perhaps his full name was A. Terentius Varro Licinius Murena. 

1 Dio 53, 12. Dio assigns a part of Spain, Baetica, to the list of public provinces 
in 27 b.c. Which is not at all likely. Strabo is even worse. In his account of the 
original division (p. 840), Gallia Narbonensis as well as Baetica is senatorial. Syria 
at this time was simply the Antonian province (Syria and Cilicia Campestris), to 
which Cyprus, taken from Egypt after Actium, was at first added. 

2 L. Ganter, Die Provinzialvcrwaltung der Triumvirn , Diss. Strassburg (1892), 

56 ff. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug . 47, 1 : ‘provincias validiores et quas annuis magistra- 
tuum imperiis regi nec facile nec tutum erat, ipse suscepit.’ Compare Dio 53, 12,2: 
ra S’ IcrxvpoTtpa w? Kai crfiaAcpa Kai ImKivhvva Kai tjtol rroAe/LUOtx,' nva 9 rrpoooi- 
kous lyovra T] Kai aura Kad' lavra filya n vewrcplcrai Bwapeva Karlcryeu. 



PR 1 NCEPS 327 

was the only immediate change from Triumviral practice. No 
longer the menace of a single consular proconsul governing all 
Spain, hut instead two or three legates, inferior in rank and 
power. Hence security for the Princeps, and eventually a multi¬ 
plication of small provinces. 

No less simple the fashion of government. The ruler proposed 
to divide up the different territories comprised in his provincia 
and to administer them through his legates, according to the 
needs of the region in question and the men available—or safe 
to employ. 1 They might be ex-praetors or ex-consuls. ThusPom- 
peius Magnus had governed Spain as proconsul in absence 
through three legates, namely one consular and two praetorian. 

The division of imperial provinces into the categories of con¬ 
sular and praetorian is a subsequent and a natural development. 
No new system was suddenly introduced in the year 27 b.c.— 
Augustus' men should be described as legati in his provincia 
rather than as governors of provinces. To begin with, they are 
praetorian in a majority. That was to be expected. Consulars 
who had governed vast provinces as proconsuls, who had fought 
wars under their own auspices and had celebrated triumphs would 
consider it no great honour to serve as legates. The Triumvirate 
had replenished the ranks of the consulars—there must have been 
now about forty men of this rank—and after the Pact of Brun- 
disium Rome had witnessed no fewer than ten triumphs of pro- 
consuls, Caesarian or Antonian, before Actium, and six more since 
then. Some of these men were dead or had lapsed long ago from 
public notice. Nor was it likely that the ex-Antonians Pollio, 
Censorinus, C. Sosius and M. Licinius Crassus would command 
armies again. Yet, apart from these survivals of a lest cause, Rome 
could boast in 27 B.c. some eleven viri triumphales. Some of the 
military men were advanced in years, namely the senior consular 
Calvinus, the two survivors from the company of Caesar's legates 
in the Civil Wars, Carrinas and Calvisius, and a general from the 
campaign of Philippi, C. Norbanus. But there were presumably 
three nobilcs in the prime of life; 2 and three recent novi homines. 3 
Not to mention T. Statilius Taurus. 

Yet of this impressive and unprecedented array of viri Iriam- 
phales , only one was to hold command of an army again, and that 

1 Strabo, p. 840: Siaipaiv aAAorc aWcus rd$r ^copas t<a t 77 po? to vs xaipovs ttoXl - 
TCUO/U.CV'OS’. 

z Ap. Pulcher, L. Marcius Philippus and Messalla Corvinus. 

J L. Cornificius, L. Autronius Paetus and Sex. Appuleius. 



328 PR 1 NCEPS 

in his old age, twenty years from his consulate. It was Sex. 
Appuleius, a kinsman of the Princeps. 1 Nor are the other consuls 
of the age of the Revolution and the years between Actium and 
the first constitutional settlement any more conspicuous. Most 
of them were young enough, for advancement had been swift and 
dazzling. Yet the novi homines like Q. Laronius, M. Herennius, 
L. Vinicius are not found in charge of military provinces; 
still less such nobiles as the three Valerii, Cinna’s grandson, or 
Cn. Pompeius, the descendant of Sulla the Dictator. After 28 B.c. 
only two of these consulars serve as legates of the Princeps in his 
provincial and three only, so far as known, hold the proconsulate 
of Africa with legions and the nominal hope of a triumph. 3 The 
wars of Augustus were waged in the main by men who reached 
the consulate under the new order. 

The position of the Princeps and his restored Republic was by 
no means as secure and unequivocal as official acts and official 
history sought to demonstrate. He feared the nobiles , his enemies. 
Consulars with armies were rivals to the Princeps in power as 
well as in military glory. It would be expedient to rely instead 
upon the interested loyalty of partisans of lower standing—and 
novi homines at that. Hence the conspicuous lack of legates of 
Augustus either noble in birth or consular in rank. Not a single 
nobilis can be found among his legates in the first dozen years, 
and hardly any consulars. 

Likewise in so far as concerns the provinces left in the charge 
of proconsuls. Under the dispensation of Sulla the Dictator, the 
public provinces were ten in number. Now they were only eight, 
about as many as the Senate could manage with safety. 4 More¬ 
over, the most difficult and most dangerous of the imperial domi¬ 
nions were not among them—a fair and fraudulent pretext to 
lighten the task of the Senate. At first the portion of the Senate 
seems to balance the provincia of the Princeps—it comprised 
three military provinces, Illyricum, Macedonia and Africa. These 

1 Sex. Appuleius ( P 1 R 2 , A 961), was the son of Augustus’ half-sister Octavia 
(. ILS 8963). He was legate of Illyricum in 8 b.c. (Cassiodorus, Chron. min. 2, 135). 

2 Namely C. Antistius Vetus (cos. stiff. 30) and M. Titius (cos. suff. 31). It must 
be admitted, however, that full lists of provincial governors in the early years of 
the Principate of Augustus are not to be had. 

3 Namely M. Acilius Glabrio (cos. suff. 33), c. 25 B.c. (PIR 2 , A 71); L. Sempro- 
nius Atratinus and L. Cornelius Balbus, who triumphed in 21 and 19 b.c. respec¬ 
tively (CIL i 2 , p. 50). 

4 Dio and Strabo are inadequate here. The public provinces in 27 b.c. were 
probably Africa, Illyricum, Macedonia with Achaia, Asia, Bithynia-Pontus, Crete 
and Cyrene, Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica. 



PRJNCEPS 329 

regions were far from peaceful, but their garrison was kept small 
in size, perhaps some five or six legions in all. Reasons of internal 
politics thus helped to postpone the final conquest of the Balkan 
and Danubian lands. In time, however, the Princcps encroached 
in Illyricum and in Macedonia, the basis from which the north¬ 
eastern frontier of empire was extended far into the interior up 
to the line of the Danube. 1 

In the provincia of Augustus, the ordination of consular and 
praetorian provinces gradually developed; and it is bv no means 
certain that it held good for the public provinces from the begin¬ 
ning. Ultimately only two provinces, Africa and Asia, were 
governed by proconsuls of consular rank. In the early years it 
might be expected that from time to time men of consular rank 
would be put in charge of the military provinces of Illyricum and 
Macedonia; and such are in fact attested, namely three of the 
principal marshals of Augustus, all novi homines. 2 

Under the Triumvirate and in the years after Actium partisans 
of Augustus governed the provinces with the rank of proconsuls 
and celebrated triumphs for victories won in Spain, Gaul, Africa 
and Macedonia. Spain and Gaul, the martial provinces of the 
West, were now deprived of proconsuls. Whether the work of 
conquest and pacification went on, or whether order was held to 
be established, the territories of Augustus’ provincia were to be 
firmly held by men whom he could trust. Northern Italy was no 
longer a province, but the Alpine lands, restless and unsubdued, 
called for attention. A beginning had been made; 3 and the work 
of conquest was to be prosecuted. 4 As for the provincia of the 
Princeps east and west, six names are attested as legates in the 
first four years of the new dispensation (27-23 B.c.). 5 Of these six 

1 Cf. below, p. 394. 

2 M. Lollius in Macedonia, c. 19-18 b.c. (Dio 54, 20, 4 IT., cf. L'ann. ep ., 1933, 
85), P. Silius Nerva (Dio 54, 20, 1 f., cf. 1 LS 899) and M. Vinicius (Velleius 2, 
96, 2 f ) in Illyricum, c . 17 16 and r. 14 13 respectively. 

1 By campaigns against the Salassi conducted by C. Antistius Vetus in 35 or 
34 (Appian, III. 17) and by Mcssalla Corvinus at a date difficult to determine 
(Dio 49, 38, 3, under 34 B.c., but perhaps in error, cf. L. Ganter, Die Provinzial- 
verwaltung der Triumvirn , 69 ff.). 

4 In 25 B.t'. Varro Murena subdued the Salassi (Dio 53, 25, 3 f.; Strabo, p. 205). 
M. Appuleius (cos. 20 n.c.) is attested at Tridentum, bearing the title of ‘legatus’, 
perhaps c. 23 B.c. (JLS 86). Note also a proconsul, L. Piso, sitting in justice at 
Mediolanium (Suetonius, De rhet. 6): presumably the consul of 15 b.c. The 
precise definition of the command held by generals operating in northern Italy in 
this period is a matter of no little difficulty. 

5 In Spain C. Antistius Vetus and L. Aelius Lamia were legates in Citerior, 
P. Carisius in Ulterior (on the Spanish legates, below, p. 332 f.). M. Vinicius won 
a victory in Gaul in 25 b.c. (Dio 53, 26, 4). In Syria a certain Varro is attested 



330 PRINCEPS 

legati Augusti pro praetore , only one was of consular standing. 1 
The others were praetorian. Nor was high birth in evidence. 
The family and connexions of one of the legates are uncertain ; 2 
none of the others had consular ancestors—if their parents were 
senatorial at all, they were obscure and low in rank. These legates 
were direct appointments of Augustus, responsible to him alone. 
It will be conjectured that the Senate’s choice of governors for 
the military provinces of Illyricum, Macedonia and Africa, in 
public law merely a matter for the lot, was no less happy and 
inspired than if they were legates of Augustus instead of pro- 
consuls, independent of the Prmceps and equal to him in rank. 
Only two names are recorded in this period. 3 Certain novi homines , 
subsequent consuls, probably earned ennoblement by service as 
legates or as proconsuls when praetorian in rank. 4 

Augustus was consul every year down to 23 B.C.; he therefore 
possessed a voice in the direction of senatorial debate and public 
policy, a vague and traditional control over all provincial gover¬ 
nors. At need, he could revive the imperium consulare , ostensibly 
reduced when the Republic was restored. 

Such were the powers of Augustus as consul and proconsul, 
open, public and admitted. In the background, all the over¬ 
whelming prestige of his auctoritas , and all the vast resources of 
personal domination over the empire of the world. 

c. 24-23 (Josephus, Bjf i,398; AJ 15, 345); and the first legate of Galatia, annexed 
in 25, was M. Lollius (Eutropius 7, 10, 2). 

1 C. Antistius Vetus (cos suff. 30 B.c.) Governing Syria for Caesar as quaestor 
in 45 B.c., he joined the Liberators at the end of the following year (above, p. 171). 

2 Namely Varro, legate in Syria c. 24-23. Presumably the M. Terentius Varro 
attested by the SC de Mytilenaeis of 25 B.c. (IGRR iv, 33, col. C, 1. 15), cf. P-W 
V A, 691 ff. Possibly a brother of Varro Murena. 

3 The consular M. Acilius Glabrio, proconsul of Africa c. 25 b.c. ( PIR 2 t A 71), 
and the obscure M. Primus, proconsul of Macedonia c. 24-23 b.c. (Dio 54, 3, 2— 
misdated to 22 B.c.). 

4 For example, no previous military service of the novi homines C. Sentius 
Saturninus (cos. 19 b.c.) and P. Silius Nerva (cos. 20) is known ; as for L. Arruntius 
(cos. 22), only his command at Actium is attested. L. Tarius Rufus (cos. suff. 16) 
and M. Vinicius (cos. suff. 19) may well have held more than one praetorian com¬ 
mand in the provinces: Illyricum and Macedonia respectively? Tarii Rufi occur 
on Dalmatian inscriptions (CIL m, 2877 f.; cf., however, below, p. 362, n. 2); and 
Vinicius had a tribe named in his honour at Corinth (Uann. 4 p. y 1919, 2). 



XXIII. CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 


T HE pretext of a special mandate from Senate and People was 
not merely a recognition of the past services and unique 
eminence of Caesar’s heir, not merely a due guarantee of his 
dignitas and pledge of civil concord or vested interests—there 
was work to he done. The restored Republic needed a friendly 
hand to guide its counsels and set in order its imperial domi¬ 
nions—and a firm authority to enforce a programme of social 
and moral regeneration. 

The constitutional settlement of 27 B.c. regulated without 
restricting the powers of the Princeps. The formula then de¬ 
vised would serve for the present, but his New State would 
require yet deeper foundations. The provinces must be pacified, 
their frontiers secured and extended, their resources assessed and 
taxed; there were veterans to dismiss, cities to found, territories 
to organize. Above all, the Princeps must build up, for Rome, 
Italy and the Empire, a system of government so strong and a 
body of administrators so large and coherent that nothing should 
shatter the fabric, that the Commonwealth should stand and 
endure, even when its sovran organs, the Senate and People, were 
impotent or dumb, even if the Princeps were an infant, an idiot 
or an absentee. 

That would take time. Augustus’ provincia at once called for 
attention. He turned first to the provinces of the West, setting 
out from Rome towards the middle of the year 27. In absence, 
distinct political advantages. Caesar the Dictator intended to 
spend three years in the Balkans and the East, not merely for 
warfare and for glory but that consolidation and conciliation 
should come more easily and more naturally. Time, oblivion and 
security were on his side if he removed an unpopular person and 
exorbitant powers. The same reasons counselled Augustus to 
depart. Others as well—he did not wish to contemplate the 
triumphal pomp of Crassus and the prosecution of the Prefect 
of Egypt. In Rome the Senate and People might enjoy the 
blessings of order and the semblance of freedom: the chief men 
of his party were there, Agrippa, Taurus and Maecenas, to 
prevent any trouble. 

Augustus came to Gaul. A vain expectation was abroad, made 
vocal in the prayers of poets and preserved by historians, that he 



332 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

proposed to invade the distant island of Britain, the island first 
revealed to Rome and first trodden by his divine parent. 1 The 
design of conquering either Britain or Parthia had no place in the 
mind of Augustus. Passing through the south of Gaul he arrived 
in Spain before the end of the year. 

Two centuries had elapsed since the armies of the Roman 
Republic first invaded Spain: the conquest of that vast peninsula 
was still far from complete. The intractable Cantabrians and 
Asturians of north-western Spain, embracing a wide range of 
territory from the western Pyrenees to the north of Portugal, had 
never yet felt the force of Roman arms; and in the confusion of 
the Civil Wars they extended their raids and their domination 
southwards over certain of the more highly civilized peoples. 
Cn. Domitius Calvinus had governed Spain during a difficult 
three years (39-36 B . c .); 2 Calvinus and five proconsuls after him 
had celebrated Spanish triumphs in Rome. Some of these cam¬ 
paigns may have prepared the way for Augustus: if so, scant 
acknowledgement in history. 3 

In 26 B.c. Augustus took the field in person. 4 lie marched 
northwards against the Cantabrians from a base near Burgos. 
The nature of the land dictated a division of forces. The Romans 
operated in three columns of invasion; and as all glory and all 
history now concentrate upon a single person, only the detach¬ 
ment commanded by Augustus himself has left any record. The 
campaign was grim and arduous. Augustus fell grievously ill. 
He sought healing from Pyrenean springs and solace in the com¬ 
position of his autobiography, a work suitably dedicated to 
Agrippa and Maecenas. In his absence, the two legates in Spain 
(C. Antistius Vetus in Citerior and P. Carisius in Ulterior) 3 dealt 
with the Asturians by a convergent invasion of their territory. 
Official interpretation hailed the complete subjugation of Spain 
by Augustus. Janus was once more closed. The rejoicing was 
premature. The stubborn mountaineers rose again and again. In 
Ulterior the brutal P. Carisius, who continued in command, was 
a match for them. 6 In Citerior the next three legates all had hard 

1 Dio 53, 25, 2. 

2 Velleius 2, 78, 3 ; Dio 48, 42, r fF. 

3 Apart from the Acta Triumphalia, no record of any fighting save when Taurus 
was there (Dio 51, 20, 5). Orosius, however (6, 21, 1), makes Augustus’ war begin 
in 28 b.c. 

4 On these campaigns, AJP lv (1934), 293 fF.; for the legates in Spain in 26-19 
B.c., ib. 315 ff. P. Carisius coined at Ementa {BMC, R. Emp. 1,51 fF.). 

5 Orosius 6, 21 ; Florus 2, 33; Dio 5^, 25, 5 ff. 

6 Dio 54, 5, 1 (mentioning the rpv^rj and wfLonqs of Carisius). 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 333 

fighting to do. 1 Finally in 19 B.c. Agrippa, patient and ruthless, 
imposed by massacre and enslavement the Roman peace upon a 
desolated land. Such was the end of a ten years’ war in Spain 
(from 28 to 19 B.c.) 2 . 

Frail and in despair of life, Augustus returned to Rome towards 
the middle of 24 B.c. He had been away about three years: Rome 
was politically silent, with no voice or testimony, hoping and 
fearing in secret. On the first day of January he entered upon 
his eleventh consulate with Murena, a prominent partisan, as his 
colleague. Three events—a state trial, a conspiracy and a serious 
illness of Augustus —revealed the precarious tenure on which the 
peace of the world reposed. Meagre and confused, the sources 
defy and all but preclude the attempt to reconstruct the true 
history of a year that might well have been the last, and was 
certainly the most critical, in all the long Principate of Augustus. 3 

From a constitutional crisis, in itself of no great moment, arose 
grave consequences for the Caesarian party and for the Roman 
State. Late in 24 b.c. or early in 23 a proconsul of Macedonia, 
a certain M. Primus, gave trouble. He was arraigned in the 
courts for high treason on a charge of having made war against 
the kingdom of Thrace without authority. Primus alleged in¬ 
structions from the Princeps. The First Citizen appeared in court. 
His denial upon oath secured condemnation of the offender. 4 

Varro Murena the consul had been among the defenders of the 
proconsul of Macedonia. A man of notorious and unbridled free¬ 
dom of speech, he took no pains to conceal his opinion of the exer¬ 
cise of a uc tor it as.* Such old-fashioned libertas was fatally out of 
place. Murena soon fell a victim to his indiscretion, or his ambition. 
A conspiracy was hatched—or at least discovered. The author 
was Fannius Caepio, Republican in family and sentiment. 6 Murena 

1 Namely L.Aelius Lamia in 24 22 b . c . (in Dio 53,29,1 thenameyloi»Aao(r/lt//.tAto? 
should probably be corrected, cf. Cassiodorus, Chron. min . 2, 135 ; cf. PIR 2 , A 199) ; 
C. Furnius (the younger, ms. 17 b . c .) in 22-10 b . c . (Dio 54, 5, 1 f.); P. Silius 
Nerva in 19 b . c . (Velleius 2, 90, 4; cf. CIL u, 3414 (Carthago Nova): ‘P. Silio leg. 
pro | pr. patrono | colonei’). 

“ Dio 54, 11, 1 fF. The mendacious Velleius (2, 90, 4) asserts that Augustus in 
person had achieved the conquest of Spain (in 26 and 25 B.c.), and that there was 
no trouble ever after—‘postea ctiam latrociniis vacarent.’ 

} The fullest account, that of Dio, misdates the trial of Primus and conspiracy 
of Murena to 22 B.c. Moreover, only one consular list, the Fasti Capitolini , reveals 
the fact that Murena was consul ordinarius in 23 b.c. All the others head the year 
with the suffvet us , Cn. Calpurnius Piso. 4 Dio 54, 3, 2 f. 

. 5 lb. 54 , 3 , 4 : €7T€ihf] Kai (iKpario Kal KaraKopcl rrj Trappyjaia npos 7 rderay opolws 
*XPV to* 

b But difficult to identify precisely, cf. P-W vi, 1993 f- 



334 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

was implicated. The criminals were condemned in absence, 
captured when evading arrest, and put to death. The Senate 
sanctioned their doom by its publica auctoriias . 1 

The truth of the matter will never be known: it was known to 
few enough at the time, and they preferred not to publish a 
secret of state. The incident was disquieting. Not merely did the 
execution of a consul cast a glaring light on the characterof the new 
Republic and the four cardinal virtues of the Princeps inscribed 
on the golden shield and advertised everywhere. Not only did 
it reveal a lack of satisfaction with the ‘felicissimus status'. Worse 
than all that, it touched the very heart and core of the party. 
Fannius was a ‘bad man' to begin with, a Republican. Not so 
Murena. Long ago Salvidienus the marshal betrayed his leader 
and his friend. Since that catastrophe until recently the chief 
men of the Caesarian party had remained steadfastly loyal to 
Caesar's heir even in the absence of a full measure of mutual 
trust or of mutual affection—they knew too much for that, and 
revolutionaries are not sentimental. Their loyalty to Augustus 
was also loyalty to Rome—a high and sombre patriotism could 
prevail over political principle, if such existed, or private dislike. 
Yet even so, only four years earlier, one of the closest of the 
associates of Augustus, Cornelius Gallus, the first Prefect of 
Egypt, had been recalled and disgraced. 

The tall trees fall in the tempest and the thunderbolt strikes 
the high peaks. 2 Another of the partv-dynasts had come to grief. 
Murena was the brother of Terentia, the wife of the all-powerful 
Maecenas. Y r et neither Maecenas nor Murena's half-brother, the 
virtuous and disinterested Proculeius, an intimate friend of 
Augustus, could save him. Proculeius had openly deplored the 
fate of Gallus; 3 and Proculeius got credit for his efforts on behalf 
of Murena. 4 What friends or following Murena had is uncertain— 
but the legate of Syria about this time bore the name of Varro. 5 

The Republic had to have consuls. To take the place of 
Murena in the supreme magistracy, Augustus appointed Cn. 

1 Dio 54, 3, 4 fF.; Velleius 2, 91, 2: ‘erant tamen qui hunc felicissimum statum 
odissent; quippe L. Murena et Fannius Caepio diversis moribus (nam Murena 
sine hoc facinore potuit videri bonus, Caepio et ante hoc erat pcssimus) cum 
inissent occidendi Caesaris consilia, opprcssi auctoritate publica, quod vi facere 
voluerant, iure passi sunt.’ 

2 So Horace, ostensibly prophetic, in an Ode addressed to Licinius (2, 10, 9 fF.) 
—who is probably Murena. 

3 Dio 53, 24, 2. 

4 lb. 54, 3, 5: Horace, Odes 2, 2, 5 f.: ‘vivet extento Proculeius aevo | notus in 

fratres animi paterni.’ 5 Josephus, BJ 1, 398; AJ 15, 345. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 335 

Calpurnius Piso, a Republican of independent and recalcitrant 
temper. Hitherto Piso had held aloof from public life, disdaining 
office. Augustus, in virtue of arbitrary power, offered the con¬ 
sulate. 1 Piso’s acceptance sealed his acquiescence in the new 
dispensation. 

Then Augustus broke down: undermined in Spain and tem¬ 
porarily repaired, his health had grown steadily worse, passing 
into a dangerous illness. Close to death, he gave no indication 
of his last intentions—he merely handed over certain state papers 
to the consul Piso, to Agrippa his signet-ring. 2 Under their 
direction the government could have continued—for a time. 

Augustus recovered. He was saved by cold baths, a pre¬ 
scription of the physician Antonius Musa. P'rom that date the 
Princeps enjoyed a robust health that baffled his doctors and his 
enemies. On July 1st he resigned the consulate. In his place a 
certain L. Sestius took office—another exercise of auctoritas , it 
may be presumed, arbitrary but clothed in a fair pretext. Sestius, 
once quaestor to M. Brutus, worshipped the memory of the 
Liberators. 3 The choice of Sestius, like the choice of Piso, will 
attest, not the free working of Republican institutions, but the 
readiness of old Republican adherents to rally to the new regime, 
for diverse motives—ambition, profit and patriotism. 

The conspiracy of Murena and the illness of Augustus were 
a sudden warning. The catastrophe was near. For some years, 
fervent and official language had celebrated the crusade of all 
Italy and the glorious victory of Actium—for Actium was the 
foundation-myth of the new order. There is something unreal 
in the sustained note of jubilation, as though men knew its falsity: 
behind it all there lurked a deep sense of disquiet and insecurity, 
still to be detected in contemporary literature. The past was re¬ 
cent and tangible—the Ides of March, the proscriptions and Philip¬ 
pi were barely twenty years distant. The corruption of ancient 
virtue and the decline of ancient patriotism had brought low a 
great people. Ruin had been averted but narrowly, peace and order 
restored—but would it last? And, more than security of person 
and property, whence would come salvation and regeneration? 

Quem vocet divum populus ruentis 
imperi rebus ? 4 

The anxiety was public and widespread: it has found vivid and 

1 Tacitus, Ann . 2, 43. z Dio 53, 30, 2. 

3 lb. 50, 32, 4. Son of P. Sestius ( tr . pi. 57 Horace dedicated Odes 1, 4 

to him. 4 Horace, Odes 1, 2, 25! . 



336 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

enduring expression in the preface of Livy’s great history and in 
certain of the Odes of Horace. 1 

The chief men of the Caesarian party had their own reasons. 
If Caesar’s heir perished by disease or by the dagger, there might 
come again, as when Caesar the Dictator fell, dissension in their 
ranks, ending in civil war and ruin for Rome. Patriotism con¬ 
spired with personal interest to discover a solider insurance, a 
tighter formula of government. Whatever happened, the new 
order must endure. Two measures were taken, in the name of 
Caesar Augustus. The constitutional basis of his authority was 
altered. More important than that, official standing was conferred 
upon the ablest man among his adherents, the principal of his 
marshals—M. Vipsanius Agrippa, thrice consul. This was the 
settlement of the year 23 B.c. 

Augustus resolved to refrain from holding the supreme magis¬ 
tracy year by year. In the place of the consulate, which gave him 
a general initiative in policy, he took various powers, above all 
proconsular imperium over the whole empire. 2 In fact, but not 
in name, this reduced all proconsuls to the function of legates of 
Augustus. As for Rome, Augustus was allowed to retain his 
military imperium within the gates of the city. That was only 
one part of the scheme: he now devised a formidable and indefi¬ 
nite instrument of government, the tribunicia potest as. As early 
as 36 B.c. he had acquired the sacrosanctity of a tribune for life, 
in 30 B.c. certain powers in law. No trace hitherto of their em¬ 
ployment. 3 It was not until this year that the Princeps thought of 
exerting tribunicia poteslas to compensate in part for the consulate 
and to fulfil the functions, without bearing the name, of an extra¬ 
ordinary magistracy; from July 1st 23 B.c. Augustus dated 
his tenure of the tribunicia potestas and added the name to his 
titulature. This was the ‘summi fastigii vocabulum’ invented by 

the founder of a legitimate monarchy. 4 

» 

1 Livy, Praej. 9: ‘haec tempora, quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possu- 
mus.’ Horace, Odes i, 2, is quite relevant here, though the poem may well have 
been composed as early as 29 or 28 B.c. 

2 Dio 53, 32, 5 f. (the only evidence). Proconsular imperium was conferred, 
taael tcattanag, for life according to A. v. Premerstein, Pom Werden u. Weseti des 
Prinzipats , 232 ff. That Augustus received imperium maius is explicitly stated by 
Dio, ought never to have been doubted and is confirmed, if that were needed, by 
the five edicts found at Cyrcne (for a text of which, cf. J. G. C. Anderson in 
JRS xvii, 33 ff.). It is reasonable enough to suppose that the powers granted in 
this year were sanctioned by the passing of a lex de imperio. 

3 Unless in 29 n.c., to exclude a man from the tribunate (Dio 52, 42, 3). 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 56. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 337 

With his keen taste for realities and inner scorn (but public 
respect) for names and forms, Augustus preferred indefinite and 
far-reaching powers to the visible and therefore vulnerable pre¬ 
rogatives of magistracy. His passage from Dux to Princeps in 28 
and 27 B.c. embodied a clear definition and ostensible restriction 
of his powers—in that sense a return to constitutional govern¬ 
ment, in so far as his authority was legal. The new settlement 
liberated the consulate but planted domination all the more firmly. 
The tribunicia potestas was elusive and formidable; while im- 
perium is so important that all mention of it is studiously omitted 
from the majestic and misleading record of Augustus’ own life 
and honours. The tw r o pillars of his rule, proconsular imperium 
and the tribunician powers, w r ere the Revolution itself—the 
Army and the People. On them stood the military and monar¬ 
chic demagogue. 

For Augustus the consulate was merely an ornament or an 
encumbrance; and an absent consul was an impropriety. More¬ 
over, his continued tenure debarred others. Active partisans 
clamoured to be rew arded, legates of recent service like M. Lollius 
and M. Vinicius; and a new generation of nobiles was growing up, 
the sons of men who had fallen in the last struggle of the Republic, 
or the descendants of families to which the consulate passed as 
an inherited prerogative. 

Though the ruler shunned the holding of a magistracy, his 
powers in public law might be described as magisterial, an 
impression which was carefully conveyed by their definition 
to a period of years. The assumption of a colleague confirmed 
this fair show. In the course of the year, proconsular imperium 
was conferred upon Agrippa for five years. The exact nature 
and competence of the grant is uncertain: it probably covered 
the dominions of the Princeps, east and west, lacking, however, 
authority over the provinces of the Senate. 1 That was to come 
later—and later too the jealously guarded tribunicia potestas , the 
veritable 'arcanum imperii’. 

It was not for ostentation but for use that the Princeps took 
a partner and strengthened his powers when he appeared to 

1 Cf. M. Kemhold, Marcus Agrippa (1933), 167 ff. Dio mentions no grant of 
imperium to Agrippa. 'That Agrippa at this early date possessed imperium maius 
over the senatorial provinces in the East has been argued, but cannot be proved. 
Nor can precision be extorted from Josephus’ statement ( AJ 15, 350): nepnerai 
& Ayplmras rear ntpae ’ Jovlov SiaSoxo? Kaiaapi. Against a grant of authority 
o\er all the East in 23 b.c*. can be urged the fact that a few years later, in 20 and 
19 b.c., Agrippa is found, not there, but m Gaul and Spain (Dio 54, 11, 1 ff.). 



338 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

divide them. Before the end of the year he dispatched Agrippa 
to the East. An invasion of Arabia had failed, and the ill-advised 
project was abandoned. There were less spectacular and more 
urgent tasks. Two years before, Amyntas, the ruler of Galatia, in 
the execution of his duty of pacifying the wild tribes of the Taurus 
had been killed in battle. 1 Rome inherited: M. Lollius,an efficient 
and unpopular partisan of Augustus, was engaged in organizing 
the vast province of Galatia and Pamphylia. 2 Moreover the time 
might seem to be near for renewing diplomatic pressure upon the 
King of the Parthians to regain the standards of Crassus and so 
acquire easy prestige for the new government. 3 

Not only that. Syria was the only military province in the 
East except Egypt. Egypt might seem secure, governed by a vice¬ 
roy of equestrian rank—yet there had been Cornelius Gallus. 
The next prefects, M. Aelius Gallus and P. Pctronius, were dim 
figures compared with the poet who nad commanded armies in 
the wars of the Revolution. 4 Syria was distant from Rome, there 
must be care in the choice of Caesar’s legate to govern it. Con¬ 
spiracy in the capital might be suppressed without causing dis¬ 
turbances: if backed by a provincial army, it might mean civil 
war —the Varro in charge of Syria was perhaps Murena’s 
brother. He fades from recorded history. When M. Agrippa went 
out, he administered Syria through deputies, residing himself in 
the island of Lesbos, a pleasant resort and well chosen for one 
who wished to keep watch over the Balkans as well as the East. 5 

So much for the settlement of 23 b.c. It was only twenty-one 
years from the removal of a Dictator and the rebirth of Libertas, 
twenty-one years from the first coup d'etat of Caesar’s heir. 
Liberty had perished. The Revolution had triumphed and had 
produced a government, the Principate assumed form and defini¬ 
tion. If an exact date must at all costs be sought in what is a 
process, not a series of acts, the establishment of the Empire might 
suitably be reckoned from this year. 

The legal and formal changes have been summarily described, 
the arguments indicated which might have been invoked for 
their public and plausible justification. Words and phrases were 
not enough. Piso and Sestius, ex-Republicans in the consulate, 
that looked well. But it was only a manifesto. Men might recall 

1 Dio 53, 26, 3; Strabo, p. 569. 2 Eutropius 7, 10, 2. 

Cf. D. Magie, CP in (1908), 145 ft. 

4 M.( ?) Aciius Gallus, Prefect of Egypt perhaps from 27 to 25 b.c., made a fruit¬ 
less invasion of Arabia in 25 B.c. (Dio 53, 29 &c.); P. Petronius, his successor in 
25, operated in Ethiopia (Dio 54, 5, 4 &c.). 5 Dio 53, 32, 1. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 339 

another associate of Brutus, C. Antistius Vetus, made consul 
with Cicero’s bibulous son in the year after Actium: no pre¬ 
tence of Republic then. Nor was the consulate of a Marcellus 
(Aeserninus) and of the ex-Pompeian L. Arruntius wholly con¬ 
vincing (22 b. c.). Augustus adopted certain other specious 
measures that appeared to provide solid confirmation of the re¬ 
newal of the Republic. As a testimony of the efficiency of his 
mandate and even of the sincerity of his intentions, the Princeps 
restored certain provinces to proconsuls: they were merely 
Narbonensis and Cyprus, no great loss to Gaul and Syria. 1 There 
had been successful operations in Gaul and in the Alpine lands, 
as well as in Spain, 2 but no serious warfare in the senatorial pro¬ 
vinces. But now, as though to demonstrate their independence, 
proconsuls of Africa were permitted to wage wars and to acquire 
military glory—L. Sempronius Atratinus triumphed from Africa 
in 21 B.c., Balbus two years later for his raid into the land of the 
distant and proverbial Garamantes. 3 

That was not all. The appointment of a pair of censors in 
22 B.c. (Paullus Aemilius Lcpidus and L. Munatius Plancus) 
announced a return to Republican practices and a beginning of 
social and moral reform. 4 That process was to be celebrated as the 
inauguration of a New Age. It was perhaps intended that Secular 
Games should be celebrated precisely in that year; 5 and it is at least 
remarkable that certain Odes of Horace (published in the second 
half of 23 B.c.) should contain such vivid and exact anticipations of 
the reforms that Rome expected—and for which Rome had to wait 
five years longer. Again Augustus put off the task, conscious of 
the inherent difficulties or hampered by certain accidents. 

In the previous winter flood, famine and pestilence had spread 
their ravages, producing riots in Rome and popular clamour that 
Augustus should assume the office of Dictator. 6 He refused, 
but consented to take charge of the corn supply of the city as 
Pompeius Magnus had done: this function, however, he trans¬ 
ferred to a pair of curatores of praetorian rank. The censors 
abdicated, nothing done. 

The life of the Princeps was frail and precarious, but the 
Principate was now more deeply rooted, more firmly embedded. 

1 Dio 54, 4, 1 (22 B.c.). 

2 M. Vinicius in Gaul (Dio 53, 26, 4), Murena against the Salassi (Dio 53, 25, 

3 &c.). 3 C 1 L 1 2 , p. 50. 4 Dio 54, 2, 1. 

5 H. Mattingly, CR xlviii (1934), 161 ff., in reference to the clear indication 
in Virgil, Aen . 6, 792 f.: ‘aurea condet | saecula qui rursus Latio.’ 

6 Res Gestae 5; Dio 54, 1, 1 ff. 



340 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

It remains to indicate the true cause of the settlement of 23 B.c. 
and to reveal the crisis in the inner councils of the government. 

The constitution is a facade—as under the Republic. Not only 
that. Augustus himself is not so much a man as a hero and a 
figure-head, an embodiment of power, an object of veneration. 
A god's son, himself the bearer of a name more than mortal, 
Augustus stood aloof from ordinary mankind. He liked to fancy 
that there was something in his gaze that inspired awe in the 
beholder: men could not confront it. 1 Statues show him as he 
meant to be seen by the Roman People—youthful but grave and 
melancholy, with all the burden of duty and destiny upon him. 

Augustus’ character remains elusive, despite the authentic 
details of his sayings and habits that have been preserved, despite 
the inferences plausibly to be derived from the social and moral 
programme which he was held to have inspired. He was no 
puppet: but the deeds for which he secured the credit were in the 
main the work of others, and his unique primacy must not obscure 
the reality from which it arose - the fact that he was the leader of 
a party. 

At the core of a Roman political group are the family and most 
intimate friends of the real or nominal leader. In the critical year 
of Murena’s conspiracy and Augustus’ all but fatal illness the 
secret struggle for influence and power in his entourage grew 
complicated, acute and menacing. The principal actors were 
Li via, Maecenas and Agrippa. Augustus could not afford to 
alienate all three. In alliance they had made him, in alliance they 
might destroy him. 

The marriage with Livia Drusilla had been a political alliance 
with the Claudii, though not that alone. The cold beauty with 
tight lips, thin nose and resolute glance had inherited in full 
measure the statecraft of houses that held power in Rome of their 
own right, the Claudii and the Livii. She exploited her skill for 
the advantage of herself and her family. Augustus never failed to 
take her advice on matters of state. It was worth having, and she 
never betrayed a secret. Livia had not given the Princcps a child. 
She had two sons by her first husband, Ti. Claudius Nero and 
Nero Claudius Drusus. For them she worked and schemed ; they 
had already received dispensations allowing them to hold magis¬ 
tracies at an early age. 2 Even had they not been the step-sons of the 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 79, 2. 

2 Tiberius was permitted in 24 b.c. to stand for office five years earlier than the 
legal term (Dio 53, 2<S, 3), becoming quaestor in the next year. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 341 

Princeps, Tiberius and Drusus were pledged to a brilliant career 
in war and politics, for they were the direct heirs of one branch 
of the patrician Claudii, the Nerones. 

There was closer kin. Octavia had been employed in her 
brother’s interest before and knew no policy but his. She had 
a son, C. Marcellus. On him the Princeps set his hopes of a line 
of succession that should be not merely dynastic, but in his own 
family and of his own blood. Two years earlier the marriage of 
his nephew to his only daughter Julia had been solemnized in 
Rome. Already in 23 the young man w^as aedile; and he would 
get the consulate ten years earlier than the legal provision. 1 
Marcellus might well seem the destined heir, soon to succeed a 
frail and shattered Princeps. Rumour and intrigue began to 
surround the youth. At his trial, M. Primus the proconsul of 
Macedonia alleged that he had been given secret instructions by 
Marcellus as well as by Augustus: 2 falsely, perhaps, but it was 
disquieting. However, when Augustus in prospect of death made 
his last dispositions, yielding powers of discretion to Agrippa and 
to the consul, there was no wwd of Marcellus. When Augustus 
recovered, he offered to read out the articles of his will in order 
to allay suspicion.-* The Senate refused, as was politic and in¬ 
evitable. Augustus could bequeath his name and his fortune to 
whomsoever he pleased, but not his imperium , for that was the 
grant of Senate and People, nor the leadership of his party— 
Agrippa and other party-magnates would have their w^ord to say 
about that. Two different conceptions were at war, recalling the 
rivalry between Antonius, the deputy-leader and political suc¬ 
cessor of Caesar the Dictator, and Octavianus, who w^as his heir 
in name and blood. 

The sentiments of the Caesarian party were soon made known. 
The result was a defeat for Augustus—and probably for Maece¬ 
nas as well. Between the Princeps’ two steadfast allies of early 
days there was no love lost. The men of the Revolution can 
scarcely be described as slaves to tradition: but the dour Agrippa, 
plebeian and puritan, ‘vir rusticitati propior quam deliciis’, 4 
visibly embodied the military and peasant virtues of old Rome. 
The Roman loathed the effeminate and sinister descendant of 
Ktruscan kings who flaunted in public the luxury and the vices 
in which his tortured inconstant soul found refuge—silks, gems 

1 Dio 53, 28, 3 f. 2 Id. 54, 3, 2. 

3 Id. 53, 31, 1. 

4 Pliny, NH 35, 26. 



342 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

and the ambiguous charms of the actor Bathyllus; 1 he despised 
the vile epicure who sought to introduce a novel delicacy to the 
banquets of Rome, the flesh of young donkeys. 2 Effusive in 
gratitude, or even from friendship, the chorus of Maecenas’ poets 
might salute the munificent patron of letters, the peculiar glory 
of the equestrian order modestly abiding within his station; the 
people might acclaim him in the theatre, in cheerful sul servience 
to their new rulers, or boisterously, as though towards a popular 
entertainer. Despite such powerful advocacy, Maecenas, like 
another personal friend of the Princeps, Vedius Pollio, could not 
stand as a model and an ornament in the New State. The way 
of his life, like the fantastical conceits of his verse, must have been 
highly distasteful to Augustus as to Agrippa. 

Augustus bore with the vices of his minister for the memory 
of his services and the sake of his counsel. Yet the position ol 
Maecenas had been compromised. He could not withstand 
Agrippa. Maecenas made a fatal mistake—he told Terentia of 
the danger that threatened her brother. 3 - Augustus could not 
forgive a breach of confidence. Maecenas’ wife was beautiful 
and temperamental. Life with her was not easy. 4 An added com¬ 
plication was Augustus, by no means insensible, it was rumoured, 
to those notorious charms which the poet Horace has so candidly 
depicted. 5 

Maecenas might be dropped, but not Agrippa; and so Agrippa 
prevailed. He did not approve of the exorbitant honours accorded 
to the young and untried Marcell us. Reports ran at Rome of 
dissension between the two. Agrippa’s departure to the East 
provoked various and inconsistent conjecture. In one version, 
Agrippa retired in disgust and resentment, 6 in another his resi¬ 
dence in the East is described as a mild but opprobrious form of 
banishment. 7 There is no truth in this fancy—a political suspect 
is not placed in charge of provinces and armies. 

Some at least of the perils which this critical year revealed 
might be countered if Augustus silenced rumour and baffled con¬ 
spiracy by openly designating a successor. He might adopt his 

1 Velleius 2, 88, 2 : ‘otio ac mollitiis paene ultra feminam fluens.’ Cf. especially 
Seneca, Epp. 114, 4 ff., illustrating the theme ‘talis hominibus fuit oratio qualis 
vita.’ On Bathyllus, Tacitus, Ann. 1, 54 &c. 

2 Pliny, Nil 8, 170. 3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66, 3. 

4 Seneca, Epp. 114, 6; Dial. 1, 3, 10: ‘morosae uxoris cotidiana repudia’. 

5 Odes 2, 12. For scandal about Terentia in 16 b.c\, Dio 54, 19, 3. 

6 Velleius 2, 93, 2; Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66, 3; Tib. 10. 

7 Pliny, NH 7, 149: ‘p u ^ en ^a Agrippae ablegatio.’ It is evident that Tiberius’ 
retirement to Rhodes has coloured earlier history. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 343 

nephew. Such was perhaps his secret wish, perhaps the intention 
avowed to his counsellors. It was thwarted. Agrippa’s concep¬ 
tion, backed, it may well be, by a powerful and domestic ally, 
triumphed over the Princeps and his nephew. Agrippa received 
for himself a share in the power. There would be some warrant 
for speaking of a veiled coup d'etat. 

It was bad enough that the young man should become consul 
at the age of twenty-three: his adoption would be catastrophic. 
Not merely that it shattered the constitutional facade of the New 
Republic—men like Agrippa had no great reverence for forms 
and names. It went beyond the practices of Roman dynastic 
politics into the realm of pure monarchy; and it might end in 
wrecking the Caesarian party. 

In the secret debate which the historian Cassius Dio composed 
to illuminate his account of the settlement of 28 and 27 B.c. he 
allotted to Maecenas the advocacy of monarchy, republicanism to 
Agrippa. The fiction is transparent—but not altogether absurd. 

Unity was established: it was to a Roman proverb about unity 
that Agrippa was in the habit of acknowledging a great debt. 1 
On the surface all was harmony, as ever, and Agrippa continued 
to play his characteristic role of the loyal and selfless adjutant, 
the ‘fidus Achates’, unobtrusive but ever present in counsel and 
ready for action. Agrippa had been through all the wars of the 
Revolution—and had won most of them. With exemplary modesty 
the victor of Naulochus and Actium declined honours and 
triumphs and went quietly about his work, his reward not applause 
or gratitude but the sense of duty done. 

The character of Marcus Agrippa seems to lack colour and 
personality—he might be the virtuous Aristides of Greek historians 
and moralists. The picture is consistent—and conventional. It 
was destined for exhibition to a docile public. Dispassionate 
scrutiny might have detected certain cracks and stains on this 
Augustan masterpiece. 

Virtas begets ambition; and Agrippa had all the ambition of 
a Roman. His refusal of honours was represented as modest self- 
effacement: it is rather the sign of a concentrated ambition, of a 
single passion for real power, careless of decoration and publicity. 2 
Agrippa’s nature was stubborn and domineering. He would yield 

1 Seneca, Epp. 94, 46. It was nothing less than the Sallustian epigram ‘nam 
concordia parvae res crcscunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur’ (BJ 10, 6, preceded 
by useful remarks about ‘amici’, ‘officium’ and ‘fides’). 

1 Yet Agrippa did not disdain a golden crown for Naulochus—and an azure flag 
in honour of Actium (Dio 51, 21, 3). 



344 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

to Augustus, but to no other man, and to Augustus not always 
with good grace. 1 

His portraits reveal an authentic individual with hard, heavy 
features—angry, imperious and resolute. There were grounds for 
the opinion that, if Augustus died, Agrippa would make short 
work of the Princeps’ young nephew. 2 The nobles hated the grim 
upstart, the ruthless instrument of the tyranny that had usurped 
their privileges and their power. M. Vipsanius Agrippa was a 
better Republican than all the descendants of consuls-—his ideal 
of public utility was logical and intimidating. Agrippa did not 
stop at aqueducts. He composed and published a memorandum 
which advocated that art treasures in private possession should be 
confiscated by the government for the benefit of the whole people. 3 
This was the New State with a vengeance. The nobiles were 
helpless but vindictive: they made a point of not attending the 
funeral games of Agrippa, dead earlier than they could have 
hoped. 4 

Of Agrippa, scant honour in his lifetime or commemoration 
afterwards. There was never meant to be. Any prominence of 
Agrippa would threaten the leader's monopoly of prestige and 
honour—and would reveal all too barely the realities of power. 
That would never do. M. Vipsanius Agrippa was an awkward 
topic: Horace hastily passes him over in an Ode , disclaiming any 
talent to celebrate a soldier’s exploits. 5 

Nor did Agrippa speak for himself. Like the subtle Maecenas 
and the hard-headed Livia Drusilla, he kept his secret and never 
told his true opinion about the leader whom they all supported for 
Rome’s sake. The service of the State might be described as a 
‘noble servitude’. For Agrippa, his subordination was burden¬ 
some. 6 Like Tiberius after him, he was constrained to stifle his 
sentiments. What they thought of their common taskmaster was 
never recorded. The novus homo of the revolutionary age and the 
heir of the Claudian house were perhaps not so far apart in this 
matter—and in others. 

Though the patrician Claudii were held to be arrogant, they 

1 Velleius 2, 79, i : ‘parendique, sed uni, scientissimus, aliis sane imperandi 
cupidus.’ Compare Suetonius, Divus Aug. 66, 3, on his short temper. 

2 Velleius 2, 93, 1. * Pliny, NH 35, 26. 

4 Dio 54, 29, 6. 

5 Odes 1, 6. Varius should write the epic, so Horace suggests. 

f> Pliny, NH 7, 46, mentions Agrippa’s ‘p rac £ ravc servitium’; cf. Tiberius’ view 
about the Principate, Suetonius, Tib. 24, 2: ‘miseram et onerosam iniungi sibi 
servitutem’. On the notion of monarchy as SovXcl a, cf. Aelian, Varia historia 

2, 20. 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 345 

were the very reverse of exclusive, recalling with pride their alien 
origin. In politics the Claudii, far from being narrowly traditional, 
were noted as innovators, reformers and even as revolutionaries. 
In Tiberius there was the tradition, though not the blood, of M. 
Livius Drusus as well. Like other Romans of ancient aristocratic 
stock, Tiberius could rise above class and recognize merit when 
he saw it. 

In Agrippa there was a republican virtue and an ideal of service 
akin to his own. There was another bond. Tiberius was be¬ 
trothed, perhaps already married, to Agrippa’s daughter Vipsania. 
The match had been contrived long ago by Livia, that astute 
politician whom her great-grandson called ‘the Roman Ulysses'. 1 
For her son she might have selected an heiress from the most 
eminent families of Rome: she chose instead the daughter of 
Agrippa and Caecilia, and bound by close link the great general 
to herself and to Augustus. Livia deserved to succeed. It may 
fairly be represented that the secret coup d'etat of 23 B.c. was the 
work of Livia as well as of Agrippa and a triumph for both. 

‘Remo cum fratre Quirinus.’ 2 Thus did Virgil hail the end of 
fratricidal strife and the restored rule of law. The perverse in¬ 
genuity and positive ignorance of an ancient scholiast twisted 
these words, of natural and easy interpretation, into an allusion 
to the alliance between Augustus and Agrippa. 3 Absurd for the 
aftermath of Actium, when the lines were composed, they are not 
even appropriate to a later date, when Agrippa’s power had been 
accorded status and definition before the law. Agrippa was not, 
Agrippa never could be, the brother and equal of Augustus. 
He was not Divi filius , not Augustus; he lacked the unique 
auctoritas of the predestined leader. Therefore, even when 
Agrippa subsequently received proconsular power like that of 
Augustus over all the provinces of the Empire, and more than 
that, the tribunicia potestas, he was not in all things the equal and 
colleague of Caesar Augustus. 

No system was thus established of two partners in supreme 
power, twin rulers of all the world, as a schematic and convenient 
theory might suggest. 4 Nor was Agrippa thereby unequivocally 
designated to assume the inheritance of sole power, to become 
all that Augustus had been. The nobiles would not have stood it. 

1 Suetonius, Caligula 23: ‘Ulixem stolatum.’ 

2 Aen. 1, 292. 

3 Servius on Acn. 1, 292. 

4 K. Kornemann, Doppelprinzipat u. Reichsteiluug im Imperium Romantim (1930). 



346 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

Agrippa is rather to be regarded as the deputy-leader of the 
Caesarian party. 

To the Principate of Augustus there could be no hereditary 
succession, for two reasons, the one juristic and the other per¬ 
sonal. Augustus’ powers were legal in definition, magisterial 
in character; and Augustus, Caesar’s heir, a god’s son and saviour 
of Rome and the world, was unique, his own justification. Con¬ 
tinuity, however, and designation to the Principate was in fact 
achieved by adoption and by the grant of powers to an associate. 
Augustus’ own arrangements, however, were careful devices to 
ensure an heir in his own family as well; he wished to provide 
for a dynasty and to found a monarchy in the full and flagrant 
sense of those terms. 

But the Caesarian party had thwarted its leader in the matter of 
Marcellus. Ultimately Marcellus might become Princeps, when 
age and merit qualified. For the moment, it did not matter. 
Whatever the distant future might bring, a more urgent problem 
confronted the government. Agrippa, Livia and the chief men in 
the governing oligarchy had averted the danger of any premature 
manifestation of hereditary monarchy; they had restored unity 
by secret compulsion, with Agrippa as deputy-leader: even 
should Augustus disappear, the scheme of things was saved. 

A democracy cannot rule an empire. Neither can one man, 
though empire may appear to presuppose monarchy. There is 
always an oligarchy somewhere, open or concealed. When the 
Caesarian armies prevailed and the Republic perished, three 
dynasts divided and ruled the Roman world: their ambitions and 
their dissensions broke the compact and inaugurated the rule of 
one man. No sooner destroyed, the Triumvirate had to be res¬ 
tored. The alliance of equals had proved unsatisfactory and 
ruinous. Lepidus lacked capacity, Antonius cunning and tem¬ 
perance: Octavianus had been too ambitious to be a loyal partner. 
Now that one man stood supreme, invested with power and with 
auctoritas beyond all others, he could invite to a share in his rule 
allies who would not be rivals. 

It was hardly to be expected that the qualities requisite for 
a ruler of the world should all be found in one man. A trium¬ 
virate was ready to hand, in the complementary figures of Augus¬ 
tus, Maecenas and Agrippa. To attach the loyalty of the soldiers 
and inspire the veneration of the masses a popular figure-head 
was desirable. Augustus, with his name and his luck, was all that 
and more. Augustus might not be a second Caesar: he lacked the 



CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 347 

vigour and the splendour of that dynamic figure. But he had 
inherited the name and the halo. A domestic minister was needed, 
wise in counsel, sensitive to atmosphere and skilled to guide—and 
even create—the manifestation of suitable opinions. Maecenas 
was there. Again, Augustus had neither the taste nor the talent 
for war: Agrippa might be his minister, the organizer of victory 
and warden of the military provinces; or, failing Agrippa, the ex¬ 
perienced Taurus. Statesmen require powerful deputies and 
agents, as a historian observed when speaking of these men. 1 

Such a triumvirate existed, called into being not by any pre¬ 
ordained harmony or theory of politics, but by the history of the 
Caesarian party and by the demands of imperial government. It 
was not the only formula or the only system available. Indeed, 
for the empire of Rome it might be too narrow, especially as 
concerned provinces and armies. 

Despite all the delegation to dependent princes or Greek cities 
in the East and autonomous municipalities in the West, the Empire 
was too large for one man to rule it. Already the temporary 
severance of East and West in the years between the Tact of 
Brundisium and the War of Actium had been alarming, because 
it corresponded so clearly with history and geography, with 
present needs, with developments of the imagined future. Two 
emperors might one day be required —or four. Yet the fabric 
must be held together. Two remedies were available. The 
Princeps might perambulate, visiting each part in turn. Augustus 
spent long periods of residence in the provinces, at Tarraco, 
Lugdunum and Samos. But the Princeps after all stood at the 
head of the Roman State and w r ould be required in the capital. 
It might be desirable to convert the Principate into a partner¬ 
ship, devising a vicegerent for the East—and perhaps for the 
western lands as well. Not only this—the w^ar in Spain was not 
yet over. Gaul and the Balkans, large regions with arduous tasks 
to be achieved, might clamour for competent rulers over a long 
period of years. The extended commands of the late Republic 
and the Triumviral period, once extraordinary and menacing, 
could now become safely domiciled in regular and normal ad¬ 
ministration, held by the principal servants of the government. 

The appointment of a single deputy-leader was not enough. 
Agrippa at once proceeded to his duties. Before long Mareellus, 
Tiberius and Drusus would be available to second or to replace 
him. Even they would not suffice. It w r ould be necessary, behind 

1 Velleius 2, 127, 2: ‘ctenim magna negntia magnis adiutoribus egent.’ 



348 CRISIS IN PARTY AND STATE 

the facade of the constitution, behind the Princeps and his family, 
to build up a syndicate of government. 1 It is time to investigate 
in some detail the composition and recruitment of the governing 
oligarchy, with especial reference to its leading members, the 
principes viri. 

1 Dio 52, S, 4 (Agrippa to Augustus): vCr Se 77aera ae drdyKi) irui'ayan'icrTas: 
77 oAAoi's', are TOOai'Ti) «; tu/voe/uV?;? dpyovrn, cy cir. Compare the mention of 
TTupabvvavTtvovTc^ (lb. 53. 10. 3). 



XXIV. THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 


T HE modest origins of the faction of Octavianus stand re¬ 
vealed in the names of the foundation-members; and sub¬ 
sequent accessions have been indicated from time to time. It 
grew steadily in numbers and in dignity as Caesar’s heir recruited 
followers and friends from the camps of his adversaries until in 
the end, by stripping Antonius, it not merely swallowed up the 
old Caesarian party but secured the adhesion of a large number 
of Republicans and could masquerade as a national party. Over 
seven hundred senators accompanied Italy’s leader in the War of 
Actium, most of them with scorn and hate in their hearts—yet 
from the salutary compulsion to derive honour and advancement . 
Of this imposing total, so Augustus proudly affirmed, no fewer 
than eighty-three either had already held the consulate or were 
later rewarded with that supreme distinction. 1 

Caesar the Dictator augmented the Senate by admitting his 
partisans. Neither the measure nor the men were as scandalous 
as was made out then and since. Caesar preserved distinctions. 
'The more discreditable accretions supervened later during the 
arbitrary rule of a Triumvirate which was not merely indifferent, 
but even hostile, to birth and breeding. The Senate had swollen 
inordinately, to more than a thousand members. In order that 
the sovran assembly should recover dignity and efficiency w r hen 
the Free State was restored, Octavianus and Agrippa carried out 
a purification in 28 B.c. Of the ‘unworthy elements’, some two 
hundred were induced to retire by the exercise of moral suasion. 2 

The true character of the purge, so gravely attested and so 
ingenuously praised by historians, did not escape contemporary 
observers. There was a very precise reason for reducing the roll 
of the Senate. Over three hundred senators had chosen Antonius 
and the Republic at the time of the coup d'etat of 32 b.c. Some 
made quick repentance, joining the company of those renegades 
who rose to high office, Crassus, Titius and IY 1 . Junius Silanus. 
Others, spared after the victory, retained rank and standing, like 
Sosius and Furnius. 3 Scaurus and Cn. Cinna were not especially 

1 Res Gestae 25. 

- Dio 52, 42, 1 ff.; Velleius 2, 89, 4: ‘senatus sine asperitate, nec sine severitate 
Iectus.' 

3 C. Sosius was among the xvviri saaris faciundis who supervised the celebration 



350 THE PARTY OK AUGUSTUS 

favoured—Scaurus, like some other Republicans and Pompeians, 
never reached the consulate, Cinna not until more than thirty 
years had elapsed. But some perished or disappeared. Nothing is 
heard again of the consular L. Gellius Poplicola or of three other 
Antonian admirals at Actium. 1 

Nobiles were required to adorn the Senate of a revived Republic 
—there were far too many navi homines about. From an ostenta¬ 
tion of clemency and magnanimity, some of the minor partisans 
of Antoni us may have been allowed to retain senatorial rank, in 
name at least. As soon as a census came they would forfeit it, 
if they had lost their fortunes. After Actium certain cities of 
Italy were punished for Antonian sympathies by confiscation of 
their lands for the benefit of the veterans. 2 The estates of three 
hundred and more disloyal or misguided senators were not all 
tenderly to be spared out of respect for dignity: local magnates 
of the Antonian faction in the towns of Italy had local enemies. 

A number of victims of the purge probably belonged to the 
deplorable class of senators unable to keep up their station. For 
the rest, the high assembly now discarded certain useless or un¬ 
sound members, lacking claims of pietas towards the Princeps, 
service to the Caesarian cause and protection in high places. The 
Caesarian partisans and the successful renegades remained, men 
to whom adventure, intrigue and unscrupulous daring had brought 
the rapid rewards of a revolutionary age. 

Obscurity of birth or provincial origin was no bar. Of the great 
plebeian marshals a number had perished— Salvidienus a traitor 
to his friend and leader, Canidius for loyalty to Antonins, Saxa 
slain by the Parthians, Ventidius of a natural death. Had they 
survived from good fortune or a better calculation in treason, they 
would have held pride of place among the grand old men of the 
New r State, honoured by Princeps and Senate, acclaimed in public 
and hated in secret. 

A sufficient company of their peers was spared for further honours 
and emolument, in the forefront Agrippa and Taurus, of unknown 
ancestors. The august and purified assembly that received from 
the hands of Italy’s leader the restored Republic did not belie 
its origin and cannot evade historical parallel. It was a formidable 
collection of hard-faced men enriched by war and revolution. 

of the Secular Games in 17 b.c. (ILS 5050, I. 150). C. Furnius, along with a 
mysterious person called C. Ciuvius (P/P 2 , C 1204), was specially adlccted to con¬ 
sular rank in 29 b.c. (Dio 52, 42, 4). 

1 Namely M. Insteius, Q. Nasidius and M. Octavius. But, for that matter, few 
Triumviral consuls even are at all prominent under the Principate. 2 Dio 51,4, 6. 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 351 

No hint of a Republican reaction here. The senators knew 
the true purpose of Augustus’ adoption of Republican forms and 
phrases, the full irony in the ostensible contrast between Dictator 
and Princeps. The Caesarian party was installed in power: it 
remained to secure domination for the future. After the assassin¬ 
ation of Caesar vested interests averted disturbance and imposed 
the settlement of March 17th. Vested interests were now more 
widely spread, more tenacious, more tightly organized. Capital 
felt secure. A conservative party may be very large and quite 
heterogeneous. Cicero, when defining the Opiimates (or cham¬ 
pions of property and the existing dispensation), boldly ex¬ 
tended the term from the senatorial order to cover every class in 
society, not shutting out freedmen. 1 What in Cicero’s advocacy 
was propaganda for the moment or mere ideal had become 
palpable reality—as the result of a violent redistribution of 
power and property. The aristocratic Republic had disguised and 
sometimes thwarted the power of money: the new order was 
patently, though not frankly, plutocratic. 

Capital received guarantees which it repaid by confidence in 
the government. More welcome than the restoration of constitu¬ 
tional forms was the abolition of direct taxation in Italy, crush- 
ingly imposed by all parties in the struggle for power after 
Caesar’s assassination and augmented yet more by Octavianus to 
finance his war against Antonius. 2 The spoils of victory and the 
revenues of the East now revivified the economy of Italy. The 
speculators and the bankers who supported with their funds, 
willing or constrained, the coup d'etat and got in recompense the 
estates of the vanquished now profited further from the Princi- 
pate—land rose rapidly in value. 3 But the new order was some¬ 
thing more than a coalition of profiteers, invoking the law and the 
constitution to protect their fortunes. So far indeed from there 
being reaction under the Principate, the gains of the Revolution 
were to be consolidated and extended: what had begun as a 
series of arbitrary acts was to continue as a steady process, 
guided by the firm hand of a national administration. 

1 Pro Sestio 97: ‘quis ergo iste optimus quisque? numero, si quaeris, innume- 
rabiles, neque emm aliter stare possemus; sunt principes consili publici, sunt qui 
eorum sectam sequuntur, sunt maximorum ordinum homines, quibus patet curia, 
sunt municipales rusticique Romani, sunt negoti gerentes, sunt etiam libertini 
optimates. numerus, ut dixi, huius generis late et varie difFusus est; sed genus 
umversum, ut tollatur error, brevi circumscribi et defmiri potest, omnes optimates 
sunt qui neque nocentes sunt nec natura improbi nec furiosi ncc malis domesticis 
impediti.’ 

Above, p. 284. 


3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 41, 1. 



352 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

The Roman Commonwealth in the days of the Republic was 
composed of three orders, each with definite rank, duties and pri¬ 
vileges. They were to remain: the Romans did not believe in 
equality. 1 But passage from below to the equestrian order and 
from the equestrian order to the Senate was to be made in¬ 
comparably more easy. The justification for advancement lay in 
service—above all, military service. In this way a soldier’s family 
might rise through equestrian to senatorial rank in two or three 
generations, according to the social system of the Principate; and 
senators were eligible for the purple. The passage of time ex¬ 
tended the process and abbreviated the stages, so that the sons 
of knights, knights themselves and finally Thracian and Illyrian 
brigands became emperors of Rome. 

Excited by the ambition of military demagogues, the claims of 
the armed proletariat of Italy menaced and shattered the Roman 
Republic: none the less, when offered some prospect that their 
aspirations for land and security would be recognized, the soldiers 
had been able to baffle politicians, disarm generals and avert blood¬ 
shed. In possession of their farms, the veterans were now the 
strongest pillar of the military monarchy. Twenty-eight colonies 
in Italy and a large number in the provinces honoured Augustus 
as their patron and their defender/ 

In the year 29 b.c., about the time of his triumph, Octavianus 
gave a donative in money to the veterans in his colonies. 3 No 
fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand men received the 
bounty of their leader. This unofficial army of civic order was 
steadily replenished. Down to 13 b.c., a cardinal date in the 
history of the Roman army, Augustus provided the discharged 
legionaries with land, Italian or provincial, which he had pur¬ 
chased from his own funds. After that, he instituted a bounty, 
paid in money. 4 Soldiers dismissed in the years 7-2 B.c. received 
in all no less than four hundred million sesterces. 5 The army 
still preserved traces of its origin as a private army in the Revolu¬ 
tion. Not until A.i). 6, when large dismissals of legionaries were 
in prospect, did the State take charge of the payments, a special 
fund being established for the purpose (the aerarium militare ). 6 

The soldier in service looked to Augustus as patron and pro¬ 
tector as well as paymaster. Like the armies as a whole, the 

1 Cicero, De re publica i, 43* ‘tamen ipsa aequabilitas est iniqua cum habet 

nullos gradus dignitatis.’ 2 Res Gestae 28. 

3 Jb. 15. 4 Dio 54, 25, 5 f. 

5 Res Gestae 16. 6 lb. 17; Dio 55, 25, 2 ff. 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 353 

individual legionary was to be isolated from politics, divorced 
from his general and personally attached to the head of the 
government and, through him, to the Roman State. One body of 
troops stood in an especial relation of devotion to the Princeps. 
Not only did he possess and retain a private body-guard of native 
Germans. 1 Roman citizens protected him—the cohors praetoria 
of the Roman general was perpetuated in times of peace by the 
standing force of nine cohorts of the Praetorian Guard, estab¬ 
lished in Rome and in the towns of Italy. 

When addressing the troops, Augustus dropped the revolu¬ 
tionary appellation of 'comrades’ and enforced a sterner discip¬ 
line than civil wars had tolerated. 2 But this meant no neglect. 
Augustus remembered, rewarded and promoted the humblest of 
his soldiers. He defended in person the veteran Scutarius in a 
court of law; 3 and he advanced the soldier T. Marius of Urvinum 
to equestrian rank. 4 

The Revolution opened, and the New State perpetuated, a path 
of promotion for the common soldier. Under the military and 
social hierarchy of the Republic he could rise to the centurionate, 
but no higher. After service, it is true, he might be in possession 
of the equestrian census, and hence eligible for equestrian posts; 5 
further, it is by no means unlikely that sons of equestrian families 
from the towns of Italy entered the legions for adventure, for 
employment and for the profits of the centurionate. But the 
positions of military tribune in the legions and of cavalry com¬ 
mander ( praefectus equitum) were reserved for members of the 
equestrian order, that is to say, for knights (including senators’ 
sons who had not yet held the quaestorship). Ex-centurions 
would naturally not be excluded, if they had acquired the finan¬ 
cial status of knights (which was not difficult): but there was no 
regular promotion, in the army itself, from the centurionate to 
equestrian posts. The Revolution brought a change, deriving 
perhaps from purely military needs as well as from social and 
political causes—namely the practice of placing centurions in 
charge of regiments of native auxiliaries. By a regular feature 
of the Augustan system senior centurions can pass directly 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 49, 1. 2 lb. 25, 1. 

3 lb. 56, 4. The name may be ‘Scruttarius’, cf. C. Cichorius, R. Studiert, 

282 ff. 

4 Val. Max. 7, 8, 6: ‘ab infimo militiae loco beneficiis divi Augusti imperatoris 
ad summos castrenses honores perductus eorumque uberrimis quaestibus locuples 
factus.’ Cf. CIL xi, 6058. 

5 Cf. JRS xxvii (1937), 128 f., and above, p. 78. 



354 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

into the militia equestris and qualify for posts of considerable 
importance. 1 Such opportunities arose for service, for distinction 
and for promotion that in time knights were willing to divest 
themselves temporarily of their rank to become centurions. 2 

The equestrian order is recruited in two ways. First, soldiers 
or soldiers’ sons become knights through military service. T. 
Flavius Petro, from Reate, a Pompeian veteran, had a son of 
equestrian rank, T. Flavius Sabinus the tax gatherer, who was 
the father of a Roman Emperor. 3 By the time of the Flavian 
dynasty a common soldier can rise to be governor of the province 
of Raetia. 4 Secondly, the freedmen. The commercial class 
profited in the Revolution, by purchasing the lands of the pro¬ 
scribed. Their number and their gains must have been very 
great: during Octavianus’ preparations before Actium special 
taxation provoked their resistance. The freedman Isidorus de¬ 
clared in his will that he suffered severe financial losses during 
the Civil Wars—no doubt a conventional assertion, not restricted 
to any one class of the wealthy in the Principate of Augustus. 
None the less, Isidorus was able to bequeath sixty million ses¬ 
terces in ready cash, to say nothing of slaves and cattle in their 
thousands. The funeral of this person cost a million sesterces. 5 

During the Triumviral period an ex-slave became military 
tribune. Horace is ferociously indignant—‘hoc, hoc tribuno 
militum’. 6 Horace himself was only one generation better. Here 
again, no return to Republican prejudices of birth. In the Prin¬ 
cipate, sons of freedmen soon occupy military posts; 7 and, just 
as under the Republic, they are attested as senators—in the 
purified Senate of Augustus. 8 Above all, freedmen were em¬ 
ployed by the Prineeps as his personal agents and secretaries, 
especially in financial duties; 9 in which matter Augustus inherited 
and developed the practices of Pompeius and of Caesar. 

Thus was the equestrian order steadily reinforced from be¬ 
neath; and it transmitted the choice flower of its own members 

1 This is the type of ‘sanguine factus eques’ (Ovid, Amores 3, 8, ro). Early 
examples of ex-centurions in the militia equestris are T. Marius (Val. Max. 7, 8, 6, 
cf. CIL xi, 6058), and L. Firmius (ILS 2226). On the whole subject, cf. above all 
A. Stein, Der r. Ritterstand (1927), 136 ff. 

2 For example, ILS 2654 and 2656 (not early). 

3 Suetonius, Divus Vesp. 1. 4 ILS 9200 (C. Velius Rufus). 

5 Pliny, Nil 33, 135. 6 Epodes 4, 20. 

7 ILS 1949 (under Tiberius); 2703 (Ti. Julius Viator, son of ‘C. Julius Aug. 

l(ib.)\ 

8 r>io 53,27,6. 

9 See below, p. 410, on Licinus—and on Vedius Pollio (the son of a freedman). 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 355 

to the Senate. The class of knights, indeed, is the cardinal factor 
in the whole social, military and political structure of the New 
State. In the last generation of the Republic the financiers had 
all too often been a political nuisance. When at variance with the 
Senate, they endangered for gain the stability of the Common- 
wcr.kh: in alliance they perpetuated abuses in Italy and through¬ 
out the provinces, blocking reform and provoking revolution. The 
knights paid for it in the proscriptions—for knights were the 
principal and designated victims of the capital levy. Though 
momentarily thinned, their ranks were soon augmented by a surge 
of successful speculators. But Augustus did not suffer them 
to return to their old games. The great companies of public ani die 
or dwindle. For the most part only minor and indirect taxes in 
the provinces are now let out to tax-farmers. 

Banished from politics, the knights acquire from the Princeps 
both usefulness and dignity. An equestrian career of service in 
the army, in finance and in administration is gradually built up, 
in itself no sudden novelty, but deriving from common practice 
of the age of Pompeius, accelerated by the wars of the Revolution 
and the rule of the Triumvirate. 

Knights had been of much more value in the armies of Rome 
than the public and necessary prominence of members of the 
governing class, proconsuls, legates and quaestors, permitted to be 
acknowledged. Centurions had no monopoly of long service— 
certain knights, active for years on end, won merit and experience 
with the army commanders of the Republic. Such a man was 
Caesar’s officer C. Volusenus Quadratus. 1 Moreover, a pro- 
consul chose for his agent and chief officer of intendance and 
supply a knight of no small consequence, the pracfedits fabrutn . 
The names alone of some of these officers arc sufficient testimony. 2 

Wars waged between Romans with veteran armies on either 
side set a high standard of mobility, supply and strategy, at once 
enhancing the importance of equestrian praefecti . Not merely 
in charge of detachments or of single legions—Salvidienus 
Rufus and Cornelius Callus led whole armies to victory. Sal¬ 
vidienus and Gallus arc symbols of the Revolution. Peace and 
a well-ordered state can do without such men. None the less, the 

1 Caesar, BG 3, 5, 2 &c.; BC 3, 60, 4. L. Decidius Saxa probably belongs to 
this type. Note also P. Considius {BG i, 21, 3), a centurion or knight who had 
served in the armies of Sulla and of Crassus. 

2 Balbus under Caesar in Spain, Mamurra in Gaul. It might also be conjectured 
that men like Ventidius, Salvidienus and Cornelius Gallus had been praefecti 
fabrum. Under the Prineipate, however, the position soon declines in importance. 



356 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

military knight found ample occupation—and increased rewards, 
as service became a career, with a hierarchy and with graded 
honours. 1 C. Velleius Paterculus passed some eight years as 
tribunus militum and praefectus equitum . 2 Others served for even 
longer—T. Junius Montanus is the prime example. 3 Again, in 
Egypt, a land forbidden to senators, Roman knights commanded 
each of the legions in garrison. 4 Nor was the practice always con¬ 
fined to Egypt—elsewhere for the needs of war an equestrian 
officer might be placed in temporary charge of a Roman legion. 5 

Military merit might also earn commendation or patronage for 
a post in civil life, namely the position of procurator. Augustus 
enlisted the financial experience of Roman business men to super¬ 
intend the collection of the revenues of his provinces. They were 
drawn from the aristocracy of the towns, provincial as well as 
Italian. Thus P. Vitellius of Nuceria and M. Magius Maximus 
of Aeclanum served as procurators/’ Magius was highly respect¬ 
able. Some said that Vitellius’ father was a freedman—no doubt 
he had many enemies. L. Annaeus Seneca, a wealthy man from 
Corduba, may have held a post of this kind before he devoted 
himself to the study of rhetoric. Pompeius Macer, who was the 
son of the Mytilenean historian, was procurator in Asia; 7 and 
before long two men from Gallia Narbonensis acquired ‘equestris 
nobilitas’ in the financial service. 8 

Not only that—Roman knights could govern provinces, some 
of them quite small and comparable to the commands which were 
accessible to a minor proconsul, but one more rich and powerful 

1 See especially A. Stein, Der r. Ritterstand, 142 fF. The equestris militia in the 
time of Augustus is a highly obscure subject. The post of praefectus cohortis does 
not at first belong to it, but takes time to develop. Notice, on the other hand, 
frequent praefecii classium ; and the position of praefectus castrorum stands high in 
the equestris militia (e.g. ILS 2688). 

2 Velleius 2, ioi, 2 f.; 104, 3; m, 2. 

3 See the remarkable inscription from Emona recently published by B. Saria 
(Glasnik muzejskega drustva za Slovetiijo xvm (1937), 134): ‘T. Junius D. f. | Ani. 
Montanus | tr. mil. vi, praef. | equit. vi, praef. | fabr. 11, pro leg. 11/ Cf. also 
ILS 2707, the inscr. of a man who was ‘trib. mil. leg. x geminae | in Hispania annis 
xvi’. 

4 At least to begin with, cf. ILS 2687. For subsequent developments and for 
certain difficult problems concerning these posts, cf. J. Lesquier, L'armee romaine 
d'&gypte d'Auguste d Dioclitien (1918), 119 ff. 

5 For example, ‘praef. eq. pro leg.’ ( ILS 2677); ‘tr. mil. pro legato’ ( ILS 2678); 
and the inscr. quoted above, n. 3. 

6 Suetonius, Vitellius 2, 2 ; ILS 1335 (Magius). 7 Tie dedication made by the 
Tarraconenses will support the conjecture that Magius had been a procurator in 
Spain. 

7 Strabo, p. 618, cf. PIR\ P 472. 

8 Tacitus, Agr . 4, 1 (Agricola’s grandfathers). 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 357 

than any. A Roman knight led an army to the conquest of Egypt 
and remained there as the first Prefect of the land, at the head of 
three legions. Certain other provinces subsequently acquired by 
Augustus were placed under the charge of prefects or pro¬ 
curators of equestrian rank. Such were Raetia and Noricum. 
When Judaea was annexed (a.d. 6 ), Coponius, a Roman knight 
of a respectable family from Tibur, became its first governor; 1 
and in a time of emergency an equestrian officer governed 
Cyrenc. 2 None of these provinces was comparable to Egypt or 
contained Roman legions; but the Prefect of Egypt found peer 
and parallel in the middle years of Augustus’ rule when a pair of 
Roman knights was chosen to command the Praetorian Guard. 
Less important stages in an equestrian career that might culmi¬ 
nate in the governorship of Egypt or the command of the Guard 
were two administrative posts in Rome created by Augustus to¬ 
wards the end of his Principate. The praefectus annonae had 
charge of the food-supply of the capital; and the praefectus 
rigilum , with cohorts enrolled in the main from freed slaves, was 
responsible for policing and for security from riot or fire. 3 

The Viceroy of Egypt could look down from high eminence 
upon a mere proconsul of Crete or Cyprus; and the Prefect of 
the Guard knew what little power resided in the decorative office 
and title of consul. That was novel and revolutionary. Not in¬ 
deed that a sharp line of division had hitherto separated senators 
from knights. They belonged to the same class in society, but 
differed in public station and prestige— dignitas again. A patent 
fact, but obscured by pretence and by prejudice. The old nobility 
of Rome, patrician or plebeian, affected to despise knights or 
municipal men; which did not, however, debar marriage or dis¬ 
credit inheritance. A recent municipal taint could be detected 
in the most distinguished of noble families. The grandfather 
of L. Piso {cos. 58 B.c.) was a business man from Placentia; 4 
a patrician Manlius married a woman from Asculum; 5 and the 
maternal grandfather of Livia Drusilla held the office of a 

1 Josephus, BJ 2, 117 f.; AJ 18, 29 fF. 

? Dio 55, 10a, 1; also Sardinia from a.d. 6 (Dio 55, 28, 1, cf. ILS 105). 

3 The first pair of praefecti praetorio was chosen in 2 B.c. (Dio 55, 10, 10), 
Q. Ostorius Scapula and P. Salvius Apcr. In the time of Augustus the Guard 
was not so important as Egypt, therefore Scapula’s prefecture of Egypt {Riv. di fit. 
cxv (1937), 337) will fall after 2 b.c. The command over the Vigiles was established 
in a.d. 6 (Dio 55, 26, 4), the charge of the Annona soon after: the first praefectus 
annonae was C. Turranius (Tacitus, Ann. 1, 7). 

4 Cicero, In Pisonem , fr. 9 — Asconius 2 (p. 2 f., Clark). 

5 Pro Sulla 25. 



358 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

municipal magistrate at Fundi, so her irreverent great-grandson 
alleged. 1 

The Empire, conscious of the need to disguise plutocracy, 
eagerly inherited traditional prejudice: it was often expressed by 
the sons of knights themselves, sublime or outrageous in their 
snobbery. One of them derided L. Aelius Seianus as an upstart, 
with solemn rebuke of the princess his paramour for the disgrace 
she brought upon her family, her ancestors and all posterity by 
succumbing to the vile embraces of a ‘municipals adulter’. 2 
Seianus’ father, Seius Strabo, may have been no more than a 
knight in standing, a citizen of Volsinii in Etruria—but Seius 
became Prefect of the Guard and Viceroy of Egypt; he married 
a wife from the patrician family of Cornelius Maluginensis. 3 By 
birth, Seius already possessed powerful connexions—his mother 
was sister to Maecenas’ Terentia and to an ambitious ill-starred 
consul best forgotten. Another member of this influential group 
was C. Proculeius (a half-brother of Varro Murena), an intimate 
friend of the Princeps in earlier days. Augustus, they said, once 
thought of giving his daughter Julia in marriage to the knight 
Proculeius, who was commended by a blameless character and 
a healthy distaste for political ambition. 4 

In itself, the promotion of knights to the Senate was no novelty, 
for it is evident that the Senate after Sulla contained many mem¬ 
bers of equestrian families.^ Like other senators outside the circle 
of the consular families, such men were commonly precluded 
from the highest distinction in the Free State. The novus homo 
might rise to the praetorship: to the consulate, however, only by 
a rare combination of merit, protection and accident. Here as 
elsewhere Augustus, under the guise of restoration, none the 
less perpetuated the policy of Caesar—and of the Triumvirs: 
‘occultior, non melior’, his enemies would have said. Under the 
new regulations, access to the Senate might appear to have been 
made more difficult, being restricted to those in possession of the 
badge of senatorial birth (the latus clavus) and a certain fortune. 
It was not so: the property qualification was low indeed, when 

1 Suetonius, Cal. 23, 2 (Aufidius Lurco—or rather, Alfidius: her mother was 
called Alfidia, JLS 125). 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 3: ‘atque ilia, cui avunculus Augustus, socer Tiberius, ex 
Druso liberi, seque ac maiorcs et posterns municipal! adultero foedabat.’ 

3 ILS 8996 (Volsinii). Cf. C. Cichorius, Hermes xxxix (1904), 461 ff. Seianus 
had several relatives of consular rank (Velleius 2, 127, 3), cf. Tabic VI at end. 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 40: ‘C. Proculeium et quosdam in sermonibus habuit insigni 

tranquillitate vitae, nullis rei publicac negotiis permixtos.’ Augustus is not to be 
taken too seriously here. 5 Cf. above, p. 81, 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 359 

judged by the standards of Roman financiers ; 1 and the Princeps 
himself, by a pure usurpation which originated in Caesar’s 
Dictatorship, proceeded to confer the latus clavus on young men 
of equestrian stock, encouraging them to stand for the office of 
the quaestorship and so enter the Senate. Not only that—the 
tribunate was also thus used. z To the best of the new-comers 
loyalty and service would ultimately bring the consulate and 
ennoblement of their families for ever. 

In brief, Augustus’ design was to make public life safe, re¬ 
putable and attractive. Encouragement was not seldom required 
before the Roman knight was willing to exchange the security 
and the profits of his own existence for the pomp, the extrava¬ 
gance and the dangers of the senatorial life; of which very rational 
distaste both Augustus’ own equestrian grandfather and his 
friends Maecenas and Proculeius furnished palpable evidence. 
Again, it often happened that only one son of a municipal family 
chose to enter the Senate. If it was thus in colonies and municipia 
that had long been a part of the Roman State, or in wealthy cities 
of old civilization, what of the backward regions of Italy that had 
only been incorporated after the Bellurn Italicum ? Cicero had 
spoken of Italy with moving tones and with genuine sentiment. 
But Cicero spoke for the existing order—even had he the will, he 
lacked the power to secure admission to the Senate for numerous 
Italians. Their chance came with Caesar. Sick of words and de¬ 
testing the champions of oligarchic liberty, the peoples of the 
Marsi, the Marrucini and the Paeligni welcomed in Caesar the 
resurgence of the Marian faction. Dictatorship and Revolution 
both broke down Roman prejudice and enriched the poorer 
Italian gentry: the aristocracy among the peoples vanquished by 
Pompeius Strabo and by Sulla now entered the Senate and com¬ 
manded the armies of the Roman People—Pollio, whose grand¬ 
father led the Marrucini against Rome, Ventidius from Picenum 
and the Marsian Poppaedius. 

Despite the Revolution and the national war of Actium, the 
process of creating the unity of Italy had not yet reached its term. 
Augustus was eager to provide for further recruitment and ad¬ 
mission to the Senate of the flower of Italy, good opulent men 
from the colonies and municipia , 3 They were the backbone of 

1 Augustus at first fixed it at a mere 400,000 sesterces, subsequently raising it to 
1,000,000 (Dio 54, 17, 3, of. 30, 2): Suetonius, Divus Aug. 41, 1 gives 1,200,000. 

* Dio 54, 30, 2; 56, 27, 1; Suetonius, Divus Aug . 40, 1; cf. 1 LS 916. 

3 ILS 212, col. 11, i ft.: ‘sane | novo mjore] et divus Aug[ustus av]onc[ulus 
m]eus et patruus Ti. | Caesar omnem florem ubique coloniarum ac municipiorum, 



360 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

Augustus’ faction, the prime agents in the plebiscite of all Italy. 
So the New State, perpetuating the Revolution, can boast rich 
and regular corps of novi homines , obscure or illustrious, some 
encouraged by grant of the latus clavus in youth and passing 
almost at once into the Senate, others after a military career as 
knights. C. Velleius Paterculus, of Campanian and Samnite 
stock, after equestrian service at last became quaestor. 1 Contem¬ 
porary 7 and parallel are two other municipal partisans, from Treia 
in Picenum and from Corfinium of the Paeligni. 2 

Municipal men in the Senate of Rome in the days of Pompeius 
were furnished in the main by Latium, Campania and the region 
from Etruria eastwards towards Picenum and the Sabine land. 
Now they came from all Italy in its widest extension, from the 
foothills of the Alps down to Apulia, Lucania and Bruttium. Not 
only do ancient cities of Latium long decayed, like Lanuvium, 
provide senators for Rome—there are remote towns of no note 
before or barely named, like Aletrium in the Hernican territory 
on the eastern border of Latium, Treia in Picenum, Asisium in 
Umbria, Histonium and Larinum of the Samnite peoples. 3 

From the recesses of Apennine and the archaic Sabellian 
tribes creep forth the unfamiliar shapes of‘small-town monsters’, 4 
lured by ambition and profit, elicited by patronage, bearing the 
garb and pretext of ancient virtue and manly independence, but 
all too often rapacious, corrupt and subservient to power. Their 
manner and habit of speech was rustic, their alien names a mock¬ 
ery to the aristocracy of Rome, whose own Sabine or Etruscan 
origins, though known and admitted, had been decently masked, 
for the most part, long ago by assimilation to the Latin form of 
nomenclature. Some were recent upstarts, enriched by murder 
and rapine. Others came from the ancient aristocracy of the land, 
dynastic and priestly families tracing descent unbroken from gods 
and heroes, or at least from a long line of local magnates, bound 

bojnorum scilicet virorum et Iocupletium, in hac curia esse voluit/ Claudius is 
not quite correct, however, in assigning the innovation to Augustus and Tiberius: 
to Caesar he could not officially appeal for precedent, cf. BSR Papers xiv (1938), 
6 ff. For the class of men referred to, compare the phrase employed by Cicero’s 
brother {Comm. pet. 53), ‘equites et boni viri ac locupletes*. 

1 Velleius 2, in, 2 (in a.d. 7). On his family, below, p. 383 f. 

2 ILS 937 (Treia); 2682 (Corfinium): ‘castresibus eiusdem | Caesaris August, 
summis [eq]u[es][tris ordinis honoribus et iam | superiori destinatum ordini.* 

3 The moneyer P. Betilienus Bassus (BMC, R. Emp. 1, 49) probably comes of 
a municipal family from Aletrium, cf. ILS 5348. For Treia, ILS 937; Asisium, 
947 . cf. 5346; Histonium, 915; Larinum, CIL ix, 730. 

4 Florus described the leaders of the insurgent Italic! as ‘municipalia ilia 
prodigia’ (2, 6, 6). 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 361 

by ties of blood and marriage to their peers in other towns, and 
desperately proud of birth. 1 Of some the town or region is 
attested; in others the family-name, by root or termination, be¬ 
trays non-Latin origin. One even bears an Umbrian praenomen ; 
and men with gentilicia like Calpetanus, Mimisius, Viriasius and 
Mussidius could never pretend to derive from pure Latin stock. 2 
Above and before all stands that blatant prodigy of nomenclature, 
Sex. Sotidius Strabo Libuscidius from Canusium. 3 

These dim characters with fantastic names had never been 
heard of before in the Senate or even at Rome. They were the 
first senators of their families, sometimes the last, with no pro¬ 
spect of the consulate but safe votes for the Princeps in his 
restored and sovran assembly of all Italy. 

Names more familiar than these now emerge from municipal 
status, maintain and augment their dignity and become a part of 
imperial history. M. Salvius Otho, the son of a Roman knight, 
sprung from ancient and dynastic stock in Etruscan Ferentum, 
became a senator under Augustus. 4 5 P. Vitellius from Nuceria 
won distinction as procurator of Augustus: his four sons entered 
the Senate. 3 Vespasius Pollio, of a highly respectable family 
from Nursia, in the recesses of the Sabine land, served in the 
army as an equestrian officer: 6 his son became a senator, his 
daughter married the tax-gatherer T. Flavius Sabinus. With 
these families lay the future. 

Others already had gone farther, securing from Augustus 
ennoblement of their families. In the forefront the military men, 

1 P. Paquius Scaeva of Histonium (ILS 915) describes himself on his huge sarco¬ 
phagus as ‘Scaevae et Flaviae filius, Consi et Didiae nepos, Barbi et Dirutiae pro- 
nepos’. Didia Decuma, daughter of Barbus, from Larinum (CIL ix, 751), might 
be related to this family. 

‘ There could scarcely be any doubt about [Mjamius Murrius Umber (ILS 
H968). The gentilicium of C. Calpetanus Statius Rufus ( PIR 2 , C 236) points to 
Etruscan origin (Schulze, LE, 138). Post. Mimisius Sardus certainly came from 
Asisium, of a family of municipal magistrates, ILS 947, cf. 5346: the first consul 
with a name terminating in ‘-isms’ is C. Calvisius Sabinus (39 b.c.). As for 
P. Viriasius Naso (ILS 158; 5940), the earliest consul with a name of this type is 
Sex. Vitulasius Nepos, cos. suff. a.d. 78, who probably comes from the land of the 
Vestini (ILS 9368, cf. CIL ix, 3587). T. Mussidius Pollianus (ILS 913) may illus¬ 
trate the names ending in ‘-idius’. 

3 ILS 5925. He has two gentilicia. Bach of them is found at Canusium—and 
nowhere else (‘Sotidius’: CIL ix, 349 and 397. ‘Libuscidius’: ib., 338, 348, 387, 
6186). 

4 Suetonius, Otho 1, 1: ‘oppido Ferento, familia vetere et honorata atque ex 
principibus Etruriae.’ For an earlier member of it, CIL i z , 2511 (67 b.c.). 

5 Suetonius, Vitellius 2, 2. 

6 Suetonius, Divus Vesp. 1,3. 



362 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

carrying on the tradition of the marshals of the revolutionary 
wars but not imposing so rapid and frequent a succession of alien 
names on the Fasti. M. Vinicius was a knight’s son from the 
colony of Cales. P. Sulpicius Quirinius had no connexion with 
the ancient and patrician house of the Sulpicii—he belonged to 
the municipium of Lanuvium. 1 L. Tarius Rufus, ‘infima natalium 
humilitate\ probably came from Picenum. 2 The origin of M. 
Lollius and of P. Silius is unknown. 3 

A novus homo held the consulate as colleague of Quirinius in 
12 B.c. 4 But after that the middle period of the Principatc of 
Augustus shows very few new names, save for a Passienus and a 
Caecina, unmistakable in their non-Latin termination A In the last 
years, however (a.d. 4--14), a significant phenomenon- - the renewed 
advance of novi homines , most of them military. Picenum, as 
would be expected, supplied soldiers: the two Poppaei came from 
an obscure community in that region. (> Larinum, a small town 
of criminal notoriety, now furnished Rome with two consuls. 7 

1 Tacitus, Arm. 3, 48. Lanuvium js only five miles from Velitrac. 

2 No certain evidence: but he purchased large estates in Picenum (Pliny, Nil 
18, 37). There are amphora-stamps of Tarius Rufus in the museums of Este and 
Zagreb (CIL v, 8112 78 ; hi, 12010 30 ): for Tarii in Dalmatia, ib., 2877 f.; in Istria, 
ib. 3060. 

3 P. Silius Nerva was the son of a senator of the preceding generation, praetorian 
in rank (P-\Y in a, 72b As for M. Lollius, there were Lollii from Picenum (such 
as Pahcanus) and from Ferentinum in Latium, cf. esp. ILS 5342 ff. (of the Sullan 
period ?) which show an A. Hirtius and a M. Lollius as censors of that town. For 
a possibility that Lollius was really of noble extraction, adopted by a novus homo , 
cf. E. Groag, P-VV xm, 1378, on the mysterious connexion with the house of 
Messalla (Tacitus, Ann. 12, 22). 

4 Namely the poet C. Valgius Rufus, of unknown origin The father-in-law of 
P. Servilius Rullus ( tr. pi. 63 ».( .), possessing large estates in Samnuim (I)c lege 
agraria in, 3, cf. 8), was not a Valgius but a (Qumctius) Valgus. 

5 L. Passienus Rufus, cos. 4 b.c., and A. Caecina (Severus), cos. suff. 1 li.c. {Vann, 
ep., 1937, 62)., Passienus is the first consul with a name of that type, nearly antici¬ 
pated, however, by Salvidienus. Nor had there been a consul with a name ending 
in ‘-a’ since the Etruscan M. Perperna, cos. 92 B.c. To precisely which branch of 
the great Volaterran gens this Caecina belonged evades conjecture. Apart from 
these mo men (and Quirinius and Valgius) there are in ail the years 15 B.c. a.d. 3 
very few consuls who are not of consular families. The mere six novi homines do 
not belong to the sudden and scandalous category. The ancestry of D. Laelius 
Ballus (cos. 6 b.c.) was senatorial. L. Volustus Saturninus (cos. suff. 12 b . c .) came 
of an old praetorian family. L. Aelius Lamia (cos. a.d. 3) was highly respectable, 
the grandson of a man who had been ‘equcstris ordinis princcpsk Nothing definite 
is known about the origin of Q. Hatenus, C. ('aelius and Q. Fahricius, suffect 
consuls in 5, 4 and 2 b.c. Caelius may have come from Tusculum, CIL xiv, 2622 f. 

6 C. Poppaeus Sabinus and Q. Poppaeus Secundus, cos. and cos. suff. in a.d. 9: 
cf. ILS 5671 ; 6562 (Interamnia Praetuttianorum). 

7 C. Vibius Postumus (cos. suff . a.d. 5) and A. Vibius Habitus (cos. suff. a.d. 8) 
certainly came from Larinum ( CIL ix, 730): for earlier members of this family, 
Cicero, Pro Cluentio 25 and 165. 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 363 

Another Samnite was M. Papius Mutilus (cos. stiff, a.d. 9), of an 
ancient dynastic house. Two other consuls in this period, though 
not locally identified, are certainly of municipal extraction. 1 

These men were representatives of Augustus’ Italy, many of 
them from the Italia whose name, nation and sentiments had so 
recently been arrayed in war against Roific. But Italy now ex¬ 
tended to the Alps, embracing Cisalpina. To the wealth of the 
old Etruscan lands and Campania, to the martial valour of Sam- 
nium and Picenum was now added the fresh vigour of the North. 
The newest Italy of all, Italia Transpadana, renowned already in 
Latin letters, had sent its sons to Caesar’s Senate. Quite early in the 
Principate five or six men appear to have begun their senatorial 
career, coming from the towns of Verona, Patavium, Brixia, Pola 
and Concordia. 2 

Excellent persons, no doubt, and well endowed with material 
goods. But Augustus was sometimes disappointed, precisely 
when he had every reason to expect the right kind of senator: 
equestrian distaste for public life and for politics (the perennial 
quics) often proved too strong. There was an ancient and re¬ 
putable family among the Paeligni, the Ovidii. 3 Augustus gave the 
la tits davits to a promising young Ovidius. This was no com¬ 
mercial upstart, no military careerist rising in social status through 
service as a centurion. But P. Ovidius Naso was not disposed to 
serve the Roman People. 

He might have become a lawyer, a Roman senator, a provincial 
governor: he preferred to be a fashionable poet—and he paid for 
it in the end. Through the recalcitrance of P. Ovidius, a certain 
Q. Varius Geminus acquired the distinction, proudly recorded on 
his tomb, of being the first senator from all the Paeligni. 4 

As has been shown, Augustus affirmed and consolidated the 

1 L. Apronius, cos. suff. a.d. 8, and C. Yiscllius Varro, cos. suff. a.d. 12 . (For 
their ^cntilicia, cf. Schulze. I.E, 1 10; 256). Also Q. Junius Blaesus, cos. suff. a.d. 10 ? 
The origin of Lucilius Longus, cos. suff. a.d. 7, is not known: perhaps the son of 
Brutus’ friend (Plutarch, Brutus 50), perhaps a relative of Lucilius Hirrus. 

‘ The Augustan moneyer L. Valerius Catullus (BMC, R. Emp. 1, 50) presum¬ 
ably comes from Verona, as does M. Fruticius (CIL v, 3339); and Valerius Naso 
(C 1 L v, 3341) was of praetorian rank before a.d. 26 (Tacitus, Ann. 4, 56). Note also 
Sex. Papinius Adenitis ( 1 LS 945: Patavium); T. Trcbellenus Rufus (931: Con¬ 
cordia); Sex. Palpellius Hister (946: Pola). Perhaps also the Vibii Visci, Schol. on 
Horace, Sat. i, 10, 83, cf. PIR\ v jo8: Brixia (cf. CIL v, 4201, a freedman of 
the family)? Further, C. Pontius Paelignus may come from Brixia, cf. ILS 942. 

1 Cf. esp. CIL ix, 3082 (L. Ovidius Ventrio). On the antiquity of the family, 
Ovid, Tristia 4, 10, 7, confirmed by the Paelignian inscr. ‘Ob. Ovicdis L.’ (from 
Corfinium, R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects 1, 246, no. 225). 

4 ILS 932: 'is primus omnium Paelign. senator | faetus est et eos honores gessit.’ 



364 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

alliance of the propertied classes in two ways—by creating an official 
career for Roman knights and by facilitating their entry to the 
Senate. The concordia ordinum thus achieved was at the same time 
a consensus Italiae , for it represented a coalition of the municipal 
families, whether in the Senate or not, all alike now looking to 
Rome as their capital, to the Princeps as their patron and defender. 

The towns of Italy contributed soldiers, officers and senators 
to the Roman State. They were themselves a part of it; the bond 
of unity was organic and grew stronger with time. The votes of 
confidence of the mtinicipia had been invoked in the crisis of civil 
war: they were not to be neglected in peace. Augustus encour¬ 
aged the towns to commend candidates for military posts in the 
equestrian service. 1 Further, he devised a scheme for making 
their influence felt in Rome—town councillors were to cast their 
votes in absence for candidates at Roman elections. 2 If the 
experiment was ever made, it was quickly abandoned. Not so 
much because it was a mockery, given the true character of 
popular election at Rome—it was quite superfluous. 

The absence of any system of representative government from 
the republics and monarchies of antiquity has been observed with 
disapproval by students of political science, especially by such as 
take the rule of the People as their ideal. The Romans, who 
distrusted democracy, were able to thwart the exercise of popular 
sovranty through a republican constitution which permitted any 
free-born citizen to stand for magistracies but secured the election 
of members of a hereditary nobility. Yet the Senate had once 
seemed to represent the Roman People, for it was a ruling aristo¬ 
cracy by no means narrow and exclusive. The generous policy 
of Caesar and of Augustus could be supported by the venerable 
weight of ancient tradition. To promote novi homines was patently 
not a ‘novus mos’. 3 All men knew that the noblest families of the 
Roman aristocracy went back to Latin or to Sabine ancestors—to 
say nothing of the Kings of Rome. 4 The widened and streng¬ 
thened oligarchy in the new r order was indirectly, but none the less 
potently, representative of Rome and of Italy. In form, the con¬ 
stitution was less Republican and less ‘democratic’, for eligibility 
to office was no longer universal, but was determined by the 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 46. Perhaps the tribum militum a populo mentioned on 
certain inscriptions, e.g. ILS 2677 (Verona). 2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 46. 

3 Velleius 2, 128, 1 : ‘neque novus hie mos senatus populique est putandi quod 
optimum sit esse nobilissimurn.’ Cf. Cicero, Pro Balbo , passim . 

4 Livy 4, 3, 10 fF, (speech of the tribune Canuleius); ILS 212 and Tacitus, Arm. 
11, 24 (‘Oratio Claudi CaesanV). Cf. above, p. 84 f. 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 365 

possession of the latus clavns\ in its working it was liberal and 11 7 
‘progressive*. Moreover, every class in society from senators ■ , 
down to freedmen now enjoyed status and function in the com¬ 
prehensive, traditional and conservative party that had super¬ 
seded the spurious Republic of the nobiles. No mere stabilizing 
here, but a constant change and renewing. 

Liberal theory and the long-desired unifying of Italy may with 
propriety be taken to commend and justify, but they do not ex¬ 
plain in root and origin, the acts of Caesar and of Augustus. In 
granting the Roman franchise and in spreading their clientelei, 
those rulers inherited the dynastic devices along with the ambi¬ 
tions of earlier Roman politicians, practised since immemorial 
time but now embracing a whole empire, to the exclusion of rivals. 

Nor was it for reasons of theory that Caesar and Augustus attached 
to their party and promoted to the Senate the aristocracy of Italy. 
Senators represented, not a region or a town, but a class, precisely 
the men of property, ‘boni viri et locupletesk As the augmenta¬ 
tion of the governing faction was not the execution of a theory or 
the act of any one man, it could hardly be suspended at one blow. 

Even had he desired, a ruler would be impotent to arrest the 
working of a natural process. How soon and how far it would go 
beyond Italy, which of the personal adherents of the new dynasty 
- the chieftains of Gallia Comata, the wealthy aristocracy of Asia 
and even the kings of the East- would enter the imperial Senate, 
time and circumstance would ordain. 1 

Over all the world w ere zealous and interested defenders of the 
established order cities, dynasts and kings, Roman citizens and 
natives. The provincial recruited for service in the auxiliary 
regiments might receive the Roman citizenship as the reward of 
valour; and many men from the provinces entered the legions 
of the Roman People, whether they already possessed the Roman 
franchise or not. Hence a .steady diffusion of Roman ways and 
sentiments, a steady reinforcement of the citizen body. Above all, 
the propertied classes in the towns of the Empire, east and w r est, 
stood firm by their protector. The vassal kings, though still in name 
the allies of the Roman People, were in fact the devoted clients 
of the Princeps—and behaved as such. 2 The cultivated Juba, the 

' Dio makes Maecenas advise Augustus to bring into the Senate of Rome roe? 
Kopvtfnuovs ef nmu’TOJV tojv eOi’wv (52, K), 3). He suitably designates them as rod? 
re yei'catoraroo? taxi too? dpicrrov^ rou? re 7tAoU(tiq)T(itovs (lb. §4). 

~ Suetonius, Divus Aug. 60: *ac saepe regnis relictis non Romae modo sed et 
provincias peragranti cotidiana officia togati ac sine regio insigni more cHcntium 
praestiterunt.’ 



366 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

husband of Antonius' daughter, the brutal and efficient Herod, 
whom Agrippa prized so highly, Polemo of Pontus or the Thra¬ 
cian dynasts, all worked for Rome, as though provincial gover¬ 
nors. Augustus regarded the kings as integral members of the 
Empire: 1 * a century later the imperial Senate of Rome welcomed 
to its membership the descendants of kings and tetrarchs.- 

In the provinces of the West, from continuous immigration, 
from the establishment of veteran colonics and from the grant of 
the Roman franchise to natives, the citizen body was widely 
diffused; and there were numerous colonies and municipia. Spain 
and Narbonensis, along with northern Italy (until recently provin¬ 
cial), vigorous and prosperous regions, were loyal to the govern¬ 
ment of Rome now that they had passed from the clicntela of the 
Pompeii to that of the Julii. Supplying a preponderance, perhaps 
already in the time of Augustus, of the recruits for the legions of 
the West, these lands gradually invade and capture the whole 
social and administrative hierarchy in the first century of th< 
Principate until they set a provincial emperor upon the thron 
and found a dynasty of Spanish and Narbonensian rulers. Augus 
tus will hardly have desired or sought to stem their steady ad 
vance. 

Augustus, it is commonly held, lacked both the broad imperial 
vision and the liberal policy of Caesar: a grave exaggeration, deriv¬ 
ing from that schematic contrast between Caesar the Dictator and 
Augustus the Princeps which may satisfy the needs of the moralist, 
the pedagogue or the politician but is alien and noxious to the under¬ 
standing of history. 3 The difference between the policy of the 
two rulers will be explained in large measure by circumstances 
by the time Augustus acquired sole power, the Revolution had 
already proceeded so far that it could abate its rhythm without 
any danger of reaction. The greater number of his partisans had 
already been promoted and rewarded. 

Caesar’s liberalism is inferred from his intentions, which can¬ 
not be known, and from his acts, which were liable to misrepresen¬ 
tation. Of his acts, one of the most significant might appear to 
be his augmentation of the Senate by the promotion of adherents 
obscure or even provincial in extraction. In purpose and in effect 
that measure was neither revolutionary nor outrageous; and the 

1 Suetonius, Dims Aug. 48: ‘nec aliter universos quam membra partisque 

imperii curae habuit/ 

3 e.j?. C. Julius Severus (OGIS 544). 

3 Cf. HSR Papers xiv (1938), 1 f. 



THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 367 

recruitment of novi homines was perpetuated and regularized by 
Caesar Augustus. 

Caesar admitted provincials. No evidence that Augustus ex¬ 
pelled them all. The descendants of the Narbonensian partisans 
remained. 1 Of the men from Spain, Saxa and Balbus were dead, 
but the younger Balbus went on in splendour and power to hold 
the proconsulate of Africa and a triumph, the last ever celebrated 
by a senator. Moreover, Junius Gallic, an opulent rhetorician from 
Spain and a friend of the Annaei, and a certain Pompeius Macer, the 
son of the procurator of Asia, entered the Senate during the reign 
of Augustus, soon followed by Cn. Domitius Afer, the great 
orator from Nemausus. 2 

Men from the provinces served as officers in the equestris 
militia ; 3 further, they held procuratorships and high equestrian 
posts under Augustus, which gave them rank comparable to the 
ulate in the senatorial career. Two, if not three, provincials 
Prefects of Egypt. 4 The sons of such eminent personages 
larlv entered the Senate under the new order. 5 Augustus 
ed Italy; but the contrast between Italy and the provinces 
isleading and erroneous when extended to colonies of full 
citizen-rights in the provinces, for they are an integral part of the 
Roman State, wherever they may be Corduba, Lugdunum, or 
even Pisidian Antioch. 6 It cannot have been Augustus’ aim to 
depreciate or retard the provinces of the West and that part of the 
Roman People which extended far beyond the bounds of Italy. 

Augustus, himself of a municipal family, was true in character 
and in habits to his origin; Roman knights were among his most 
intimate friends and earliest partisans. In the first months of 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 11, 24: ‘manent posteri eorum.’ 

L Junius Gallio, a speaker of some note, who adopted one of the three sons of 
Seneca the Elder, probably came from Spam (P-W x, 1035 f.). (Q.) Pompeius 
Macer was praetor in a.d. 15 (Tacitus, Ann. 1,72), Cn. Domitius Afer in 25 (Ann. 
4, 52). Again, a certain A. Castricius, the son of Mynotalentus (clearly of non- 
Roman extraction), held a minor magistracy at least- perhaps as promotion for a 
special service to Augustus (JLS 2676). This person was a A'A'I Jvir. No evidence, 
however, that he actually entered the Senate. 

’ It'S 2(188 (Sex. Aulienus, from Forum Julii); 9502 f. (C. Caristanius Fronto, a 
colonist at Pisidian Antioch). 

4 Not only Gallus. C. Turranius (c. 7-4 h.c.) came from Spain, if he is rightly 
to be identified with 'Turranius Gracilis (Pliny, NH 3, 3), cf. A. Stein, Der r. Hitter- 
stand , 389. Further, C. Julius Aquila (c. 10 H.c.) may well be provincial, perhaps 
from Bithynia-Pontus (for another member of this family, cf. ILS 5883 : nr. Ama- 
stris). 

5 A. Stein, Der r. Ritterstand, 291 ff. 

And, should they possess the Jus Italicum , they are treated as a part of Italy, 
even tor fiscal purposes. 



368 THE PARTY OF AUGUSTUS 

its existence the faction of Caesar’s heir numbered hardly 
a single senator; in its first years, few of distinction. What 
more simple than to assign to Augustus alone the advancement 
of novi homines under the Principate? That is to leave out the 
influence of his adherents. The Princeps was not altogether 
a frank enthusiast for merit wherever it might be discovered 
and careless of class, but a small-town bourgeois, devoted and 
insatiable in admiration of social distinction. Caesar and Tiberius, 
the Julian and the Claudian, knew their own class better and 
knew its failings. 

His name, his ambition and his acts had denied the revolu¬ 
tionary leader the support of the nobiles in his youth. Before his 
marriage to Livia, only one descendant of a consular family (Cn. 
Domitius Calvinus) belonged to the faction. Octavianus was 
acutely conscious of the need of aristocratic adherents. The 
advantageous matrimonial alliance soon showed its effects—Ap. 
Claudius Pulcher and M. Valerius Messalla were quickly won 
over. But the aristocracy were slow to forgive the man of tlu 
proscriptions. The Princeps had his revenge. lie did not care' 
to exclude any large body of nobiles from the Senate. But the 
master of patronage could attach to his cause even the most 
recalcitrant of the nobiles ; and some, like Cn. Piso (cos. 23 B.C.), 
joined perhaps from a disinterested patriotism. The old families 
had been decimated by a generation of civil wars: the sons of the 
slain were found willing to make their peace with the military 
dynast. 

Augustus bent all his efforts to attaching these young nobiles 
to his person, to his family and to the new system, with no little 
success. But there must be no going back upon his earlier 
supporters the plebs, the veterans and the knights who had 
won the War of Actium. In the crisis of 23 B.c. the Caesarian 
party thwarted the monarchical designs of Augustus and pre¬ 
vented the adoption of Marcellus ; it may be conjectured that 
certain among them, above all Agrippa, whose policy prevailed on 
that occasion, also sought to curb Augustus’ ardent predilection 
for the aristocracy. 

Like Caesar’s faction, the new Caesarian party comprised 
diverse elements, the most ancient patrician houses and the 
most recent of careerists. But this was an order more firmly con¬ 
solidated than Caesar’s miscellaneous following, bound to a cause 
and a programme as well as to a person. Furthermore, whatever 
the fate of the Princeps, the coalition would endure. 



XXV. THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 


T HE Princeps and his friends controlled access to all positions 
of honour and emolument in the senatorial career, dispensing 
to their adherents magistracies, priesthoods and provincial com¬ 
mands. The quaestorship admitted a man to the highest order in 
state and in society, the consulate brought nobility and a place 
in the front ranks of the oligarchy. 

No new system was suddenly created in January, 27 B.c., com¬ 
plete in every organ and function, nor yet by the settlement of 
23 B.c. The former date was celebrated officially: in truth the 
latter was the more important. On neither occasion is evidence 
recorded of vital changes concerning the magistracies: it is there¬ 
fore hard to discern under what conditions they were liberated 
'rom control and restored to Republican freedom. 

That there was change and development is clear. The minor 
magistracies were not definitely regulated all at once. 1 For the 
rest, the practice of the revolutionary period seems to have 
crystallized into the law of the constitution. Sulla the Dictator 
had probably fixed thirty as the age at which the quaestorship 
could be held, forty-two the consulate. Caesar had been hasty 
and arbitrary: the Triumvirs were brutal -among the grosser 
anomalies, men designated to the consulate who had never been 
senators, such as Balbus the Elder and Salvidienus Rufus. Rome 
came to witness younger and younger consuls—Pollio at thirty- 
six, Agrippa at twenty-six. The constitution never recovered 
from its enemies—or from its friends. Augustus in the first years 
masked or palliated some of its maladies—at least no juvenile 
consuls are attested for some time. None the less, in the ordi¬ 
nances of Augustus as finally established, a man became eligible 
to assume the quaestorship in his twenty-fifth year, the consulate 
in his thirty-third—with alleviations for favoured relatives, modest 
lor the young Claudii, scandalous for Marcellus. 2 Distances were 
preserved. The young nobilis often became consul at the pre¬ 
scribed term, but the son of a Roman knight commonly had to 
wait for a number of years. Which was fitting. Knights them¬ 
selves would not have complained. 

1 Cf. C. Cichorius, R. Studien , 285 ff. 

2 The dispensations accorded show that the low aj»e limit was in force before 
-.1 b.c.: it was probably established in 29-28 b.c. 



370 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

The Senate had been purged once. That was not enough for 
Augustus. He may have hoped to renew the work in 22 b.c.: he 
delayed until 18 B.c., the year of the introduction of the new 
moral code, when, in face of opposition and by complicated 
methods, he reduced the Senate from eight hundred to six 
hundred members. He professed half that size to be ideal and 
desirable. 1 That would have been harsh and narrow; even with 
a Senate of six hundred, there supervened again and again a 
scarcity of candidates for office, calling for various expedients. 2 3 
The Senate had been purified: it was rejuvenated in two ways, 
by knights’ sons made eligible through grant of the lat us davits 
and by youthful quaestors. 

When Senate and People were ostensibly sovran, the members 
of a narrow group contended among themselves for office and for 
glory: behind the fayade of the constitution the political dynasts 
dealt out offices and commands to their partisans. The dyna: 
had destroyed the Republic and themselves, down to the h 
survivor, Caesar’s heir. Engrossing all their power and all the 
patronage, he conveniently revived the Republic to be used 
they had used it. To the People Augustus restored freedom 
election. Fed by the bounty and flattered by the magnificence 
their champion, the plebs of Rome knew how they were expected 
to use that freedom. On the other hand, the candidate, at least 
for the consulate, would do well to seek the approbation of the 
Princeps. He did not nominate candidates that would have 
been invidious and superfluous. His will prevailed, in virtue of 
auctoritas? 

In the first four years of the new dispensation Augustus kept a 
tight grasp on the consulate, as the names on the Fasti attest and 
prove. Nor is there a hint anywhere of electoral ambition, cor¬ 
ruption or disorders. Emerging with renewed strength from the 
crisis of 23 B.c., the Princeps demonstrated his security by specious 
surrenders in certain provinces of public affairs--and by the 
promise, it may be, of an imminent programme of reform. The 
consulate he gave up: converted since Actium into an office of 
ostensible authority through Augustus’ continuous tenure, and 
regaining its annual and Republican dignity, it now seemed worth 
having to the aristocracy. From one fraud Augustus was debarred. 

1 Dio 54, 14,1. 

1 lb. 53, 28, 4; 54, 30, 2; 56, 27, 1 ; Suetonius, Divus Aug. 40, 1. 

3 For the manner of imperial commendatio and its exercise with reference to the 
various magistracies, see CAH x, 163 f. 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 371 

He had already restored the Republic once—he could not do it 
again. 

Agrippa departed from Rome before the end of 23 b.c., 
removing from men's eyes one of the visible evidences of military 
despotism. Next year Augustus himself set out on a tour of the 
eastern provinces (22-19 b.c.), while Agrippa in his turn passed 
westwards and went to Gaul and Spain (20-19 b.c.), after a brief 
sojourn in Rome. For a time the capital city was relieved of the 
burdensome presence of both her rulers. There followed a 
certain relaxation in the control of elections—from accident or 
from design. Augustus’ intentions may have been laudable and 
sincere—more likely that the Princeps wished to teach the nobiles 
a sharp lesson by conjuring up the perils of popular election and 
unrestricted competition. The Roman plebs clamoured that 
Augustus, present or absent, should assume the title of Dictator, 
hen he refused, they persisted in the next best thing, leaving 
;ant one of the two consulates for the next year, 21 b.c. Two 
ivies then contended, L. Junius Silanus and Q. Lepidus: the 
er was finally elected. 1 After an interval the same trouble 
urred. The year 19 b.c. opened with Augustus still absent, 

. only one consul in office, C. Sentius Saturninus. There w T as 
need of a strong hand, and Saturninus was the man to exert 
himself, firm and without fear. 2 What name the enemies of the 
government found for his behaviour has escaped record. One of 
them was removed by violence. 

A certain Egnatius Rufus when aedile several years before had 
organized his private slaves and other suitable individuals into a 
company for suppressing outbreaks of fire. 3 He won immense 
favour with the mob and was elected praetor. Encouraged by his 
succeu, Rufus put forward his candidature for the consulate in 
19 b.c. Saturninus blocked him, announcing that, even if elected 
by the people, Rufus should not become consul. The abandoned 
scoundrel—‘per omnia gladiatori quam senatori propior’—soon 
paid the penalty for his popularity and his temerity. Arrested 
with certain accomplices on a charge of conspiring to take the 
life of the Princeps, he was imprisoned and executed. 4 

1 Dio 54, 6, 2 ff. Consular elections in the years 22-19 B.c. are very puzzling. 
It almost looks as though, in each year, Augustus had filled one place with his own 
candidate, leaving the other for free election. Compare Caesar’s practice, for all 
magistracies except the consulate (Suetonius, Dims Julius 41, 1). 

2 Velleius 2, 92, 2: ‘cum alia prisca severitate summaque constantia vetere 

consulum more ac severitate gessisset/ 3 Dio 53, 24, 4 ff. (26 B.c.). 

4 Velleius 2, 92; cf. Dio 54, 10, 1 (where, however, not a word about Egnatius). 



372 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

Egnatius Rufus was a cheap victim. Public disturbances re¬ 
called the authentic Republic, something very different from the 
firm order that had prevailed in the first four years of the Princi- 
pate. Riots in Rome could not imperil peace so long as the 
Princeps controlled the armies. Nor indeed had there been 
serious danger in Rome itself. During the absence of the ruler 
(22-19 B.c.) each year one of the two consuls had been a partisan 
of Augustus and a military man, the first to ennoble his family, 
namely L. Arruntius, M. Lollius, P. Silius Nerva and C. Sentius 
Saturninus; and when Saturninus resigned late in the year 
19 b.c. he was replaced by M. Vinicius, another of the marshals. 
Nor will it be forgotten that Taurus was there all the time, with 
no official standing.' 

Rome was glad when Augustus returned. His rule, now more 
firmly consolidated, went on steadily encroaching upon the de¬ 
partments of Senate and People, law and magistrates. Electoral 
disorders were barely heard of again. The domination of the 
Triumvirs had created numerous consuls, in 33 B.c. no fewer tha, * 
eight, with masses of novi homines promoted for merit to a cheap 
distinction. The suffect consulates of Ventidius and Carrinas in 
43 b.c. showed the way. At first the dynasts were temperate. 
Then after the Pact of Brundisium the nature of their revolu¬ 
tionary rule shows itself clearly on the Fasti. In the seven years 
39-33 nineteen novi homines appear as against nine nobiles . 1 After 
seizing power in 32 b.c. Octavianus has sole control of patronage, 
advancing his own partisans, in 31-29 four novi homines and five 
nobiles. With 28 b.c. annual consulates come back, monopolized 
at first by Augustus, Agrippa and Taurus. Of the consuls of the 
period 25-19 B.c., eight come of new families against five nobles. 3 
The restored Republic, it is evident, meant no restoration of the 
nobiles , the proportion on the Fasti showing no great change from 
the Triumviral period. 

After 19 b.c., however, a development is perceptible. Yet this 
may be a result, not only of Augustus’ own enhanced security, 
with less cause to fear and distrust the nobiles , but of accident. To 
replenish the ranks of the nobiles , mercilessly thinned by war and 
proscriptions, a new generation was growing up, and along with 
them the sons of novi homines ennobled in the Revolution. From 

1 ILS 7448 f. attests the German bodyguard of the Statilii, perhaps one hundred 
and thirty strong. 

2 For the basis of calculation (which omits certain names), see above, p. 243 f. 
For the whole Tnumviral period (43 33 B.c.) the proportion is twenty-five to ten. 

' Not counting Varro Murena. 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 373 

18 to 13 B.c. only two novi homines appear on the Fasti, both with 
military service to their credit, as against eleven mobiles . l Con¬ 
spicuous among the latter are men whose fathers through death 
or defeat in the Civil Wars had missed the consulate. Here and 
on the Fasti of the years following arc to be discovered the 
aristocrats who rallied to the Principate, receiving the consulate 
at the earliest age permissible, if not with dispensations—the 
young Ahcnobarbus, Ti. Claudius Nero and his brother Nero 
Claudius Drusus, P. Cornelius Scipio, three Cornelii Lentuli, 
L. Calpurnius Piso, Iullus Antonius and the two Fabii Maximi. 
Most ol them were entrapped in the matrimonial and dynastic 
policy of Augustus. 2 

While depressing the powers, Augustus intended to restore the 
public and official dignity of the supreme magistracy of the Roman 
Republic. The Fasti in the middle years of his Principate recall 
the splendour of that last effulgence before the war of Pompeius 
• md Caesar. He persevered for a long time, hardly ever admitting 

suffect consul. After 19 B.c., down to and including 6 b.c., a 
period of thirteen years, only four are recorded, two of them 
c aused by death. 3 Augustus was baffled by circumstances. More 
and more sons of consuls grew to maturity, claiming honours as 
oi right. Again, as his own provincia gradually developed into a 
series of separate commands, it was right that they should be 
regarded and governed as separate provinces; many of them by 
the size of their armies already called for legates of consular 
standing. Yet this was apparent bv 12 B.c. at least, when four or 
live large commands already existed. 4 It was some time before 
their number increased through division of provinces, through 
new conquests and by the creation of Moesia to the seven military 
commands which the developed system could show in the last 
wars of the Princeps’ life. Not until 5 b.c. do suffect consuls 
become frequent and regular upon the Fasti. The date is not 
accidental: the flagrant dynastic policy of Augustus constrained 
him to bid for the support of the twbilcs . Hence a steady cheapen¬ 
ing of the consulate. In effect, it went now by nomination. 
Flection by the people might be a mere form, but it could not be 
abolished by a statesman who claimed to have restored the Free 

1 C. Furnius {cos. 17 b.c.) and L. Tarius Rufus (10s. suff. 16 icc.). 

Below, pp. 378 f.; 421 f. 

1 In 12 b.c. M. Valerius Messalla Barbatus and C. Caninius Rebilus, consul and 
mnsul suffect, died in office. 

4 Namely Syria, Gaul, Illyricum (probably taken over by the Princeps at this 
r H,, m) and Spain, which probably still had two armies, cf. below, p. 394!. 




374 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

State. That was left to Augustus' successor, no doubt in virtue 
of his final instructions. 1 The year a.d. 14 marks the legal 
termination of the Republic. 

It remains to indicate the ostensible qualification for ennoble¬ 
ment in the Principate—and the real working of patronage. 
Under the Republic nobility of birth, military service, distinc¬ 
tion in oratory or law, these were the three claims to the consulate. 
An orator might make mock of a jurist when urging a soldier's 
claims to the consulate. 2 None of them could prevail alone. 
Neither law nor oratory would carry a man far, save when a 
conspicuous dearth of ability drove a group of nobiles to take up 
a popular candidate for fear of something worse, or a political 
dynast was insistent to promote a deserving partisan. Pompeius, 
however, could not or would not support the Picene intriguer, 
the loquacious Lollius Palicanus. 3 Service in war might find no 
higher reward than the praetorship, unless aided by such po 
ful protection as the low-born Afranius had from Pompeius; 
Pompeius’ consul Gabinius was a politician as well as a sol 
In fact, nobility of birth prevailed and designated its candid 
often in advance, to the very year. It took the compact of 
to rob L. Domitius Ahenobarbus of his consulate in 55 B.c . 4 * 
The Roman voter, free citizen of a free community, might elect 
whom he would: his suffrage went to ancestry and personality, 
not to alluring programmes or solid merit. 

Caesar and the Triumvirs had changed all that. None the 
less, though modified, the old categories subsisted. 3 Descent 
from consuls secured the consulate even to the most unw r orthy— 
W'hich was held to be right and proper, a debt repaid to ancestors 
who had deserved w ; ell of the Roman People. 6 Yet there were 
certain nobiles whose merits fell short of recompense in the 
reign of Augustus. Eloquence and the study of the law (‘illustres 
domi artes’) ennobled their adepts. Under the new order Cicero 
would have won the consulate without competition, held it 

1 Tacitus, Ann, i, 15. 1 Cicero, Pro A lurena, passim. 

{ He hoped to stand for the consulate in 67 b.c. (Val. Max. 3, 8, 3) and in 65 

(Ad Att. 1, 1, 1). 

4 Suetonius, Duns Julius 24, 1. 

s Compare Tiberius’ practice (Tacitus, Ann. 4, 6): ‘mandabatque honores, 
nobilitatem maiorum, daritudinem militiae, inlustris domi artes spectando.’ 

6 Seneca, l)e ben. 4, 30, 1 : ‘sicut in petendis honoribus quosdam turpissimos 
nobilitas industriis sed novis praetulit, non sine ratione.' The examples which Seneca 
adduces support his contention, namely Paullus Fabius Pcrsicus, ‘cuius osculum 
etiam impudici devitabant’, and Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus (on the latter, cf. also 
Tacitus, Ann. 3, 66; 6, 29). 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 375 

without ostentation or danger, and lived secure as a senior states¬ 
man, much in demand on decorative occasions as speaker for 
the government. It was necessary to be pliable. The spirit of 
independence cost an honest, original and scholarly lawyer, 
M. Antistius Labeo, his consulate. 1 

With peace and prosperity polite arts returned to favour. 
Certain of the nobiles , old or recent, displayed some show of talent 
in oratory or letters. Pollio and Messalla still dominated the 
field: Gallus and Messallinus recalled but could not rival their 
parents. Paullus Fabius Maximus, of varied and perhaps mere¬ 
tricious talent, propagated in Rome the detestable Asianic habit 
of rhetoric which he was happy to advertise as proconsul in the 
clime of its birth. 2 L. Calpurnius Piso acquired more favour as a 
patron than from his own productions. Of the younger generation 
of the Vinicii, the one was an elegant speaker and man of fashion, 
altogether approved of by Augustus; 3 the other, a critic of 
*ting taste, so they said, had Ovid’s poems by heart. 4 
obiles did not need to adduce proficiency in the arts. Of the 
homines , C. Ateius Capito won promotion as a politician more 
as a lawyer. 4 * Nor will the orator Q. Haterius have shown 
any alarming independence. 0 Certain of the most original or most 
lively talents, like Cassius Severus, were doomed to opposition. 
It would be impertinent and pointless to scrutinize the merits 
that conferred the consulate upon C. Y T algius Rufus, an erudite 
person who wrote poems and composed a treatise on the science 
of botany, which he dedicated to Augustus. 7 

For the upstart of ability, ‘militaris industria’ was the most 
valuable endowment. Service in war and the command of armies 
brought the highest distinction to men whose youth had been 
trained in the wars of the Revolution and whose mature skill, 
directed against foreign enemies, augmented the glory and the 
security of the New State. Some were passed over, such as 
M. Lurius and P. Carisius, both of whom had served against 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 75. 

2 On the ‘novicius morbus’ (Seneca, Control 1 . 2, 4, 11), cf. F, Norden, Die atitike 
Kunstprnsa i, 289 f. A portion of Fabius’ letter to the cities of Asia can be recovered 
from several fragmentary copies, OGIS 458. 

f L. Vinicius {cos. suff. 5 B.c.), the son of the consul of 33 B.c. Augustus dis¬ 
approved of his assiduities towards Julia, cf. Suetonius, Divus Aug. 64, 2. 

4 P. Vinicius (cos. suff. a.d. 2), son of M. Vinicius (cos. suff. 19 B.c.). On him, 

cf. Seneca, Control'. 1, 2, 3; 7, 5, 10; 10, 4, 25. 

s Tacitus, Ann. 3, 75. 0 lb. 1, 13; 3. 57 - 

7 PIR\ V 169. Horace dedicated Odes 2, o to Valgius: on his botanical work, 
Hiny, NH 25, 4. 



376 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

Sex. Pompeius and elsewhere. But L. Tarius Rufus, an admiral 
at Actium, rose at last to the consulate after a command in the 
Balkans. 1 Other tiori homines , worthy heirs of the revolutionary 
marshals, could show to their credit service in the military pro¬ 
vinces before the consulate. Such were M. Lollius, M. Vinicius 
and P. Sulpicius Quirinius. 

r Phese three categories of civic excellence were traditional, 
Republican and openly advertised as the justification for en¬ 
noblement. Nothing could be more fair and honest. There were 
also deeper and better reasons for political advancement in the 
Principatc. 'The game of politics is played in the same arena as 
before; the competitors for power and wealth require the same 
weapons, namely amicitia , the dynastic marriage and the financial 
subsidy. 

Lovaltv and service to the patron and leader of the Caesarian 
partv continued to be the certain avenue of advancement. Of 
his political adherents, a number were unamiable, or at 1< 
unpopular, like Titius, "Tarius and Quirinius. That was no t ... 
Others were not merelv his allies, bound by amicitia , but i; 
true sense his intimates and friends —the Princeps regaled hi 
self on holidays by playing dice with M. Vinicius arid P. Silius. 2 
Without his favour, no norm homo could have reached the con¬ 
sulate. Of the nobiles , many of the most eminent were attached 
to the cause bv various ties. Some, such as Paullus Fabius 
Maximus, may even have enjoyed his confidence. 3 They were 
not all trusted: yet he could not deny them the consulate, their 
birthright. So 1 ullus Antonins, the younger son of the Triumvir, 
became consul. But the consulate did not matter so much. 

Enemies were dangerous only if they had armies.and even 

then they would hardly be able to induce the soldiers to march 
against their patron and imperalor. 

Augustus both created new patrician houses and sought, like 
Sulla and Caesar before him, to revive the ancient nobility, 
patrician or plebeian. Valerii, Claudii, Fabii and Aemilii, houses 
whose bare survival, not to say traditional primacy, was menaced 
and precarious in the last century of the Free State, now stand 
foremost among the principes viri in an aristocratic monarchy 
linked with one another and with the dynasty; and though the 
Scipiones were all but extinct, numerous Lentuli saved and trans¬ 
mitted the stock of the patrician Cornelii. 'The dim descendants 

1 Dio 54, 20, v. L'min. ip , iS. - Suetonius, Divus Au%. 71, 2. 

; Compare esp. the remarks of K. Ciroa^, P-W vi, 1784. 




THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 377 

of forgotten families were discovered in obscurity, rescued from 
poverty and restored by subsidy to the station and dignity of 
their ancestors. After long lapse of ages shine forth on the Fasti a 
Quinctius, a Quinctilius, a Furius Camillus, but brief in duration 
and ill-starred. 1 

Pride of birth, prejudicial or at least unprofitable while the 
Triumvirs ruled in Rome, now asserts its rights. Men revived 
decayed cognomina , invented pracnomina to recall historic glories, 
remembered old ties of kinship and furbished up the imagines of 
their ancestors, genuine or supposed. 2 Clients or distant col¬ 
laterals may have usurped rank and forged pedigrees. Over some 
noble houses of this age hangs the veil of a dubious authenticity, 
penetrated only bv their contemporaries. Messalla raised vigorous 
and public complaint when inferior Valerii sought to graft 
themselves upon his family tree. 3 Some frauds could perhaps 
—dc detection. Certain great houses had sunk for ever. Others, 
nigh casualties in the Civil Wars, loss of money and influence, 
'lack of deference to the new rulers of Rome, cannot show 
psuls now or miss a generation, emerging later. In the Princi- 
r _te of Augustus a Sulla, a Metellus, a Scaur us and other nobles 
did not rise to the consulate. 4 With so few suflfect consulates in the 
early years of the Principate, competition was acute and intense. 
The consular Iasti reveal the best, or at least the most alert and 
most astute, but not the whole body, of the nobiles. 

Of the use of the dynastic marriage, Augustus’ own debut in 
politics provided the most flagrant testimony. Betrothed to 


1 T. Quinctius Cnspinus Sulpicianus (cos. 0 b.c\), one of the paramours of Julia; 
e Quinctilius Varus (cos. 13 ».(\), of whom Velleius (2, 117,2) makes the significant 
remark ‘illustri magis quam nobili ertus familia’; M. Furius Camillus (cos. a.d. 8), 
whose son L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus ( P 1 R -, A 1140) rose against 
Claudius Caesar. 

? Certain Lentuli took the cognomen ‘Malugincnsis* (JLS 8996), which apparently 
recalls an extinct and otherwise unknown village of ancient Latium. Compare the 
name of Livia Medullina, daughter of Camillus (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 26, 1 ; 
ILS 199). There was even a Mummia Achaica (Suetonius, Galba 3, 4), the first 
wife of C. Sulpicius Galba (cos. stiff. 5 H.c.). Note the pracnomina , Paullus and 
Africanus, of the two Fabii, descended from Acmilii and Scipiones. 

1 Pliny, NH 35, 8. Observing other frauds, old Messalla Rufus had taken to 
writing family histones (ib.). Pliny observes ‘sed, pace Messallarum dixisse liceat, 
etiam mentiri clarorum imagines erat aliquis virtutuni amor.’ 

* Nobiles who miss the consulate are, for example, Cornelius Sulla Felix, PIR -, 
E 1463; (Q ?) Metellus, ib., C 62; M. Aemilius Scaurus, ib., A 405; Lentulus 
Malugincnsis, the father of the cos. siff. of a.d. ro, ib., C 1393 ; Cornelius Dolabella, 
father of the consul of a.d. 10, ib., C 1345 ; at least two men of the name of Cornelius 
Sisenna, ib., C 1454-6; and the father of C. Sulpicius Galba (cos. stiff. 5 B.c.), cf. 
Suetonius, Galba 3. 



378 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

a daughter of the moderate Caesarian P. Servilius, the youth 
proceeded in four years through a constrained and unconsum¬ 
mated union with a stepdaughter of Antonius and a political 
alliance with the unlovable Scribonia to the advantageous and satis¬ 
factory Claudian connexion. Livia, however,gave him no children. 
But Julia, his daughter by Scribonia, was consigned in wedlock 
as suited the political designs of the Princeps, to Marcellos, to 
Agrippa and to Tiberius in turn. To receive Julia, Tiberius was 
compelled to divorce his Vipsania, who fell to Gallus, Pollio’s 
ambitious son. 

What would have happened if Augustus—like that great 
politician, the censor Appius Claudius—had been blessed with 
five daughters for dynastic matches may inspire and baffle conjec¬ 
ture. 1 Though unprolific, he exploited the progeny of others.- 
The daughter was not the Princeps' only pawn. His sister Octavia 
had children by her two marriages: from the first, C. Marccllus 
and two Marcellas, who soon became available for matrimon*' 
alliances, from the second the two Antonias, daughters of IV 
Antonius. The elder Antonia went to L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, 
to whom she had been betrothed from infancy, the younger to 
Augustus’ stepson Drusus. The chaste daughters of the pro¬ 
fligate Antonius knew each a single husband only. Of the two 
Marcellas, the elder married Agrippa and then lullus Antonius; 
the two husbands of the younger were Paullus Aemilius Lepidus 
and M. Valerius Messalla Barbatus Appianus. 3 

These were the closest in blood, but by no means the only near 
relatives of the Princeps. C. Octavius his father and his mother 
Atia were each twice married. Hence another Octavia, Augustus’ 
half-sister: her sons were Sex. Appuleius and M. Appuleius, both 
consuls, no doubt at an early age. 

The schemes devised by Augustus in the ramification of family 
alliances were formidable and fantastic. He neglected no relative, 
however obscure, however distant, no tie whatever of marriage 
—or of friendship retained after divorce. As time went on, more 
and more aristocratic families were lured by matrimony into the 
family and following of the Princeps. Of his allies among the 
young nobiles the most able, the most eminent and the most 
highly prized were the two Claudii, his stepsons, then L. Domitius 

1 Cicero, Cato maior 37: ‘quattuor robustos filios, quinque filias, tantam domum, 
tantas clientelas Appius regebat et caecus et senex.’ 2 See Table III at end. 

3 For the evidence about the mo Marcellas, PIR 2 , C 1102 and 1103. The 
younger married Paullus after the death of his wife Cornelia in 16 n.c. He died 
soon after—and her second husband Barbatus died in his consulate. 




THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 379 

Ahenobarbus, L. Calpurnius Piso (the young brother-in-law of 
Caesar the Dictator) and the accomplished Paullus Fabius Maxi¬ 
mus. By his own match with Li via, the Princeps long ago had 
won the Claudian connexion: through the marriages of others 
he subsequently ensnared the patrician houses of the Cornelii 
Scipiones, the Aemilii Lepidi, the Valerii and the Fabii. As the 
young generation of nobiles grew up and passed through the 
avenue of political honours to the consulate, an imposing collec¬ 
tion of principes viri stood massed around the Princeps—bringing 
distinction and strength to the new regime, but also feuds and 
dissensions in the secret oligarchy of government./ 

When the social parvenu and revolutionary adventurer made 
himself respectable, his adherents shared in his social ascension. 
Agrippa’s first wife had been one of the prizes of the Civil Wars. 
She was the richest heiress of Rome, Caecilia, the daughter of 
Atticus. Then he married Marcella, the niece of Augustus, and 
’ istly the daughter, Julia. No less resplendent in its way was the 

rtune that attended upon other partisans of Augustus. Unfortu¬ 
nately the partners of the great marshals, Taurus, Lollius, Vinicius 
and Tarius, elude detectionand P. Siiius married the daughter of 
a respectable municipal man, a senator of praetorian rank. 2 But 
Titius secured Paullina, sister of the patrician Fabius Maximus. 3 
As for the upstart Quirinius, his first wife was an Appia Claudia, 
daughter of one of the earliest noble supporters or the faction. 4 
'Then he rose higher—his second was an Aemilia Lepida in whose 
veins ran the blood of Sulla and of Pompeius. 5 She was the 
destined bride of L. Caesar, the Princeps' grandson: the youth 
died, and Lepida was transferred without delay to the elderly 
Quirinius. 

Power, distinction and wealth, the Princeps had seized all the 
prerogatives of the nobility. The youth who had invested his 
patrimony for the good of the State found himself the richest man 
in all the world. Like the earlier dynasts, he spent for pow r er and 
ostentation—to gratify soldiers and plebs, to adorn the city and to 

1 Taurus’ son, however, married the daughter of a Cornelius Sisenna, his grand¬ 
son (cos. a.d. 11) a daughter of Valerius Messalla (for the stemma, see P-YV in a, 
21 97 )- One might also infer a relationship with the Marcii Censorini (cf. Velleius 
-» 14. 3)- There is an unexplained connexion with the Messallae in the family of 
M. Lollius (Tacitus, Ann. 12, 22, cf. E. Groag, P-W xm, 1378). 

- Velleius 2, 83, 3 (C. Coponius). 

' IGRR iv, 1716 SEG 1, 383. 

4 CIL vi, 15626, cf. PIR*, C 1059. She was the sister of Quirinius' colleague in 
the consulate, M. Valerius Messalla Barbatus Appianus. 

' Tacitus, Ann. 3, 22 f., cf. P 1 R Z , A 420, and Table IV at end. 



380 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

subsidize his political allies. Corruption had been banished from 
electoral contests: which confirmed its power in private. With 
the fortune won from confiscation and the treasure of the 
Ptolemies, the nobility could not compete. Even if lucky enough 
to have retained their ancestral estates, they were now deprived of 
the ruinous profits of political power, debarred from alliances 
with those financial interests with whom they once had shared the 
spoils of the provinces. Augustus was ready enough to bestow 
emolument upon impoverished nobles or meritorious navi homines, 
enabling them to preserve the dignity of their station and pro- 
/ pagatc their families. In the year a.d. 4 he thus augmented the 
, census of no fewer than eighty men. 1 

Upon his own adherents the Princeps bestowed nobility 
through the consulate, social distinction by advantageous mar¬ 
riages and endowment in money on a princely scale. Egypt was 
his, the prize upon which politicians and financiers had 
greedy eyes a generation before; and in Egypt large estates ' 
now owned and exploited by members of the reigning dyn; 
by prominent partisans like Agrippa and Maecenas, and by 0 
adherents like the obscure admiral M. Lurius. 2 

As proconsul of Gaul or as Dictator, Caesar had spent gener¬ 
ously. Cicero was moved to indignation by the riches of Labienus 
and Mamurra, the gardens of Balbus: 3 Cicero himself was still 
owing money to Caesar for a timely loan when the Civil War 
broke out. 4 But the Triumvirate soon blotted out the memory of 
Caesar’s generosity and Caesar’s confiscations. Augustus and 
his partisans inherited the estates, the parks and the tow n-houses 
of the proscribed and the vanquished. The Princeps himself 
dwelt on the Palatine, in the house of liortensius: 5 this w r as the 
centre, but only a part, of an ever-growing palace. Cicero had 
acquired an imposing mansion from his profits as a political 
advocate—money from P. Sulla went to pay for it. The Antonian 
U. Marcius Censorinus entered into possession, from whom it 
passed to the family of Statilius Taurus. b Agrippa now lived in 
state, sharing with Messalla the house of Antonius. 7 Spacious 
pleasure-gardens attested the wealth and splendour of Maecenas 
and Sallustius Crispus, mere knights in standing. 

1 H 10 55. *3 . (i 

2 For the details, M. Rostov tzeff, Sue. and Ec. Hist, of the Roman Empire (1926). 
573 

3 Ad Att. 7, 7, 6. 

s Suetonius, Divas Aug. 72, t. 

7 Dio 53, 27, 5. 


4 lb. 1, 2. 
u Velleius 2, 14, 3. 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 381 

The fortunes of the great politicians were gross and scandalous. 
When the elder Balbus died, he was able to bequeath to the 
populace of Rome a sum as large as Caesar had, twenty-five 
denarii a head. 1 But Balbus began as a millionaire in his own 
right. Agrippa rose out of nothing: he came to own the whole 
of the peninsula of Gallipoli. 2 Statilius Taurus possessed a variety 
of properties in Istria, whole armies of slaves at Rome. 3 The 
successful military man of parsimonious tastes, L. Tarius Rufus, 
acquired a huge fortune from the bounty of Augustus, which 
he proceeded to dilapidate by grandiose land speculation in 
Picenum. 4 L. Volusius Saturninus and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus, 
excellent men, amassed fortunes without discredit: precisely how, 
it is not recorded—perhaps by inheritance. 5 Quirinius grew old 
in envied opulence, the prey of designing society-ladies. 6 Lollius, 
officially commended for integrity, left millions to his family, not 
blameless possession of inherited wealth, but the spoil of the 
inces. 7 His granddaughter, the beautiful Lollia Paullina, 
ded like a princess. It w 7 as her habit to appear, not merely 
.ate banquets, but on less exacting occasions, draped in all 
oearls, and little else: her attire was valued at a mere forty 
million sesterces. 8 

Senatorial rank and promotion to the consulate were not the 
only favours in the hands of the party-dynasts. There were 
priesthoods and the patriciate, administrative positions and pro¬ 
vincial commands. When religion is the care of the State in an 
oligarchical society, it is evident that sacerdotal preferment will 
be conferred, not upon the pious and learned, but for social 
distinction or for political success. From cult and ritual the 
priests turned their energies to intrigue—or portentous banquets. 0 

1 Dio 48, 32, 2. 2 lb. 54, 29, 5. 

* CJL V, 323 ; 409 ; 457 ; also 878 (Aquileia). The burial-place of the Statilii has 

yielded over four hundred inscriptions of slaves (CIL Vi, (>213 6640 and pp. 994 fb)> 
among them German guardsmen (e.g. 1 LS 7448 f.). 

4 Phny, Nil 18, 37, cf. above, p. 362. 

s 'Tacitus, Ann. 3, 30 (Volusius): ‘opumque, quis domus ilia in immensum viguit, 
primus accumulator’; 4, 44 (Lentulus): ‘bene tolerata paupertas, dein magnae opes 
mnoeenter partae et modeste habitae.’ This Lentulus was probably the consul of 
14 u.c\, cf. K. Groag in PIR 2 > C 1379. Some did not praise him as highly as did 
'Tacitus (cf. Seneca, Dc ben. 2, 27, 1). 

6 'Tacitus, Ann. 3, 22. His divorced wife Aemilia Lepida dishonestly pretended 
that she had borne him a son. 

7 Pliny, Nil 9, 117 (on the wealth of his grand-daughter): ‘nec dona prodigi 
principis fuerant sed avitae opes, provinciarurn scilicet spoliis partae.’ Note also 
the numerous slaves of the Lollii in Rome (for the details, P-W xm, 1387). 

8 lb. Pliny had seen the woman. v Macrobius 3, 13, 11. 



382 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

Whether admission to the various colleges took the form of co¬ 
optation or of election by the People, the claims of birth, influence 
and patronage had always been paramount. Nobles—and above 
all patricians—had a long start. M. Aemilius Lepidus became a 
pontifex at the age of twenty-five:* he was a patrician. The novus 
homo Cicero had to wait until he became a senior consular before 
acquiring the coveted dignity of augur, which fell to M. Antonius 
when of quaestorian rank: Antonius was a noble. But Antonius 
required all Caesar’s influence behind him: he was contending 
against Ahenobarbus." 

Augustus’ revival of ancient colleges that had lapsed for cen¬ 
turies was not merely a sign of his pious care for the religion of 
Rome. The existing colleges had naturally been filled with parti¬ 
sans during the Revolution: they continued thus to be recruited. 1 
Calvisius and Taurus each held at least two priesthoods; 4 
the excellent Sentius Saturninus is found next to Augustus as 
deputy-master of the college that celebrated the Secular Games; 
and it was C. Ateius Capito who then interpreted the Sibyllr; 
oracle—no doubt to justify the date chosen by the government. 
Yet beside the great soldiers and politicians there was still a place 
for nobles in their own right, without special or public merit. 7 

Though supplemented by Caesar, the patriciate had been 
reduced again in the wars, being represented in the Senate at 
the time of Actium by not many more than twenty members. 
The sons of the slain would be available before long. But they 
would not suffice. Augustus at once proceeded to create new 
patrician families by a law of 30 b.c . 8 Among the partisans thus 
honoured w r ere descendants of ancient plebeian houses, such as 
the renegade M. Junius Silanus; but also the new T nobility of the 
Revolution, conspicuous among them the prudent Coceeii, and 
even meritorious adherents not yet consular, like the Aclii Lamiae. 0 

1 He was pontifex at least as early as 64 b.c., Macrobius 3, 13, 11. 

2 Cicero, Ad fam. 8, 14, 1. 

1 Augustus records that about one hundred and seventy of his adherents in the 
War of Actium were rewarded with priesthoods (Res Gestae 25). 

4 ILS 925; 893a. 5 ClL i 2 , p. 29. 0 Zosimus 2, 4, 2. 

7 For example, a C. Mucius Scaevola and a C. Lieinius Stolo, otherwise un¬ 
known, among the xvviri in 17 b.c. (ILS 5050, 1 . 150). 

8 Res Gestae 8, cf. Dio 52, 42, 5. Augustus conveniently omits the adlection in 
33 b.c. (Dio 49, 43, 6). It belonged, of course, to a period of ‘irregularities’. 

0 For details (and conjectures) see H. C. Heiter, De patriciis gentibus quae imp. 
R. saecc. I , II, III fuerunt (Diss. Berlin, 1909). Of the families of the old plebeian 
nobility thus honoured were probably the Calpumii, Claudii Marcelli, Domitu, 
Junii Silani and others; of the new nobility, the Aelii Lamiae, Appuleii, Asinii, 
Coceeii, Silii, StatiJii See. 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 383 

The acts and devices whereby the political dynasts of the 
previous age disposed of provincial commands need no recapitu¬ 
lation. Their manoeuvres were seldom frustrated by the estab¬ 
lished practice of balloting for provinces. The lot was retained 
in the Principate for the choice of the proconsuls of the public 
provinces. The precise manner of its working is unknown, the 
results no doubt satisfactory. Moreover, the choice of a proconsul 

-or the disposal of a province—could be resigned by the Senate 
to the Princeps. 1 If appointed by lot at all, certain of the military 
proconsuls in the early years of the Principate, such as Balbus 
in Africa, P. Silins and M. Vinicius in Illyricum and M. Lollius 
in Macedonia, must have been drawn from a small and select list 
indeed. The Princeps appointed his own legates. Before long 
the more important of his provinces were held by consulars, who 
are the principal ministers of state and therefore deserve separate 
and detailed treatment. 

Noble or upstart, the chief rhen of the Caesarian party attained 

- the consulate and dispensed patronage in their turn, open or 
secret. Tiberius, being the head of the Claudii, would have had 
a dynastic and personal following whatever the character of the 
Roman constitution: his influence, checked no doubt for a long 
time by Augustus, may be detected in the frequent promotion of 
navi homines to the consulate after a.d. 4. 2 But Tiberius was not 
the only force in high politics; and even if Taurus could not 
retain under the new dispensation his right to designate a praetor 
every year, that did not matter. There were other ways. 

The system broadens as it descends from consulars to senators 
of lower rank, to knights, freedmen and plain citizens, with per¬ 
vasive ramifications. There was a certain C. Velleius Paterculus, 
of reputable stock among the municipal aristocracies of Campania 
and Samnium. One side of his family, Samnite local gentry, 
stood by Rome in the Bellum Italicum : a descendant was Prefect 
of Egypt under Augustus. 3 On the other, his grandfather had 
helped Ti. Claudius Nero in the fight for liberty during the 
Bellum Perusinum and committed suicide when all was lost. 4 

1 For examples, cf. below, p. 406, n. 3. 

1 Below, p. 434 f. 

3 On Minatus Magius of Aeclanum, descendant of Decius Magius of Capua, and 
his activities in 89 B.c., cf. Velleius 2, 16, 3; for his son, ILS 5318. M. Magius 
Maximus certainly came from Aeclanum (ILS 1335). As the gentilicium is not 
uncommon it would hardly be fair to conjecture a relationship with Cn. Magius 
of Larinum ( Pro Cluentio 21 and 33). 

4 Velleius 2, 76, 1. He had been a praefectus fabrum of Pompeius, of M. Brutus 
and of Ti. Claudius Nero. 



384 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

The next generation was Caesarian. His father's brother, a 
senator, supported Agrippa in prosecuting the assassin C. Cassius 
under the Lex Pedia. ] Velleius’ father served as an equestrian 
officer. 2 After equestrian service himself, Velleius entered the 
Senate. 3 The influence of M. Vinicius of Cales may here be 
detected. Velleius repaid the debt by composing a history of 
Rome, fulsome in praise for the government and bitter in rebuke 
of lost causes and political scapegoats. The work was dedicated 
to the grandson of his patron. 4 

The governmental party represented a kind of consensus Italiac. 
Municipal men rising to power and influence followed traditional 
devices and secured promotion for their friends and their ad¬ 
herents, bringing young men of respectable families and suitable 
sentiments into the equestris militia , thence perhaps into the Senate. 
It might be conjectured that the patriotic clubs ( collegia iuventutis) 
of the Italian towns had a definite role to play. 

Knights themselves might rank with senators in the New St 
or even above them. Patronage could therefore follow the reve 
direction. The promotion and successful career of L. Passier 
Rufus (cos. 4 B.c.), a novus homo , attests the influence of C. S 
lustius Crispus. The great minister also adopted his friend s 
son, who became in time the husband of two princesses of the 
blood of Augustus, Domitia and Agrippina the younger. 5 A 
kinsman of the poet Propertius entered the Senate. This man 
had married well - his wife was Aelia Galla, the daughter, it may 
be presumed, of that Aelius Gallus who was the second Prefect 
of Egypt, 6 and who was subsequently to adopt the son of Seius 
Strabo, L. Aelius Seianus. Seius, the son of a Terentia, had 
married a wife from a patrician family. Seianus had brothers, 
cousins and an uncle of consular rank. 7 The patronage which he 
could exert would have been formidable enough, even if he had 
not been Prefect of the Guard and chief favourite and minister of 
Tiberius. Seianus himself became the leader of a political faction. 

.Influences more secret and more sinister were quietly at work 
all the time - women and freedmen. The great political ladies of 
the Republic, from the daughters of consular families such as 

1 Velleius 2, 69, 5. 2 lb. 2, 104, 3. 3 lb. 2, in, 2. 

4 M. Vinicius, cos. a.d. 30, cos. 11 45. 

5 For the son, PIR', P 109. IIis full name was C. Sallusfius Passienus Crispus, 
cf. L'ann. Cp., 1924, 72. 

Postumus, the husband of Aelia Galla (Propertius 3, 12, t, cf. 38), may surely 
be identified with the senator C. Propertius Postumus {ILS 914). 

7 Velleius 2, 127, 3 ; cf. ILS 8996. The stemma drawn up by Cichorius, Hermes 
xxxix (1904), 470, is hazardous: see Table VI at end. 



THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 385 

Sempronia and Servilia down to minor but efficient intriguers 
like that Praecia to whose good offices Lucullus owed, it was said, 
his command in the East, 1 found successors in the New State; 
and the freedmen who managed the private finances and political 
machinations of the dynasts, such as Pompeius’ agent Demetrius, 
the affluent Gadarene, possessor of nearly two hundred million 
sesterces, to whom cities paid honour, neglecting magistrates of 
the Roman People, were perpetuated in the exorbitant power of 
imperial freedmen, first the servants and then the ministers and 
masters of the Caesars. What in show and theory was only the 
family of a Roman magistrate, austere and national, was in reality 
a cosmopolitan court. These influences were bound up with the 
faction from the beginning: active, though studiously masked 
under the Principate of Augustus, they grow with the passage of 
dynastic politics into monarchical rule and emerge into open day 
1 the court life of the ruler of the Julio-Claudian house. 

A court soon develops, with forms and hierarchies. The ruler 
is his intimates, amici and comites , so designated by terms which 
velop almost into titles; and there are grades among his friends. 2 
* hen the Princeps, offended, declares in due solemnity that he 
revokes his favour, the loss of his amicitia marks the end of a 
courtier’s career, and often of his life. Ceremonial observances 
become more complicated: more ornate and visibly monarchic 
the garb and attire of the Princeps of the Roman State. 3 In 
portraiture and statuary, Augustus and the members of his house 
are depicted, not always quiet and unpretentious, like sombre and 
dutiful servants of the Roman People, but aloof, majestic and 
heroic. 

Livia might seldom be visible in public save at religious 
ceremonies, escorted by Roman matrons, herself the model and 
paragon, or weaving garments with her own hands, destined to 
clothe her husband, the Roman magistrate. Her private activities 
were deep and devious. She secured senatorial rank for M. Salvius 
Otho, the consulate for M. Plautius Silvanus, who was the son of 
her intimate friend Urgulania. 4 The assiduities of the young 

1 Plutarch, Lucullus 6. 

1 Mommsen, Gcs. Schr. iv, 311 fF. Note the ‘cohors primae admissionis’ (Seneca, 
De clem, i, io, 1), including Sallustius Crispus, Dellius, the Cocceii. 

J Compare, above all, the penetrating studies of A. Alfoldi, RM xlix (1934), 1 ff.; 
l (1935), iff. 

4 For Otho, Suetonius, Otho 1, 1. The influence of Urgulania with Livia is 
attested by Tacitus, Arm. 2, 34; 4, 21 f. It may also be surmised in the marriage 
of her granddaughter to Claudius the son of Drusus (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 
26, 2). 



386 THE WORKING OF PATRONAGE 

patrician Ser. Sulpicius Galba were handsomely rewarded by 
legacies in her will. 1 Much worse than that was suspected and 
rumoured about Livia—poison and murder. Her power and her 
following can be detected in the time of her son, most distasteful 
to him. Antonius’ daughter, the widow of Drusus, held a rival 
court. Among the most zealous in cultivation of Antonia’s favour 
was L. Vitellius, a knight’s son, but a power at the court of Caligula 
and three times consul, colleague in the censorship with his friend 
the Emperor Claudius. T. Flavius Vespasianus formed a con¬ 
nexion with Caenis, a freedwoman of Antonia; 2 and it was to the 
patronage of the great Narcissus that he owed the command of 
a legion. 3 The four emperors who followed Nero in the space of 
a single year were all persons conspicuous and influential at Court. 

Such were the ways that led to wealth and honours in the 
imperial system, implicit in the Principate of Augustus, but not 
always clearly discernible in their working. Political competition 
was sterilized and regulated through a pervasive system of 
patronage and nepotism. Hence and at this price a well orderc 
state such as Sulla and Caesar might have desired but could never 
have created. The power of the People was broken. No place was 
left any more for those political pests, the demagogue and the 
military adventurer. That did not mean that the direction of the 
government now rested in the hands of Senate and magistrates 
—not for that, but for another purpose, the solemn and ostensible 
restoration of their ancient dignity. 

1 Suetonius, Galba 5,2. Galba’s father had married a second wife, Livia Ocellina, 
from a distant branch of Livia’s own family. If not exactly seductive, Galba him¬ 
self was certainly artful: he got on very well with his stepmother, whose name he 
took and carried for a time (ib., 4, 1), and, like his father, was much in demand 
as a match. After the death of his wife (an Aemilia Lepida) he withstood the 
matrimonial solicitations of Agrippina, the mother of Nero. 

2 Suetonius, Dtvus Vesp. 3. 


J Ib. 4, 1. 




XXVI. THE GOVERNMENT 


T HOUGH by no means as corrupt and inefficient as might 
hastily be imagined, the governing of all Italy and a wide 
empire under the ideas and system of a city state was clumsy, 
wasteful and calamitous. Many able men lacking birth, protec¬ 
tion or desperate ambition stood aloof from politics. They could 
hardly be blamed. The consulate was the monopoly of the nobiles : 
after the consulate, little occupation, save a proconsulate, usually 
brief in tenure. The consulars became 'senior statesmen’, decora¬ 
tive, quarrelsome and ambitious, seldom useful to the Roman 
People. Within the Senate or without it, a rich fund of ability 
and experience lay idle or was dissipated in politics. 

The principcs of the dying Republic behaved like dynasts, not 
's magistrates or servants of the State. Augustus controlled the 
consulars as well as the consuls, diverting their energies and 
their leisure from intrigue and violence to the service of the State 
in Rome, Italy and the provinces. The Senate becomes a body 
of civil servants: magistracies are depressed and converted into 
qualifying stages in the hierarchy of administration. 

Jn a sense, the consulars of the Republic might be designated 
as the government, ‘auctores publici consilii’. But that govern¬ 
ment had seldom been able to present a united front in a political 
emergency. Against Catilina, perhaps, but not against Pompeius 
or Caesar. When it came to maintaining public concord after the 
assassination of Caesar the Dictator, the consulars had failed 
lamentably, from private ambition and personal feuds, from in¬ 
competence and from their very paucity. In December of 43 b.c. 
there were only seventeen consulars alive, mostly of no conse¬ 
quence. By the year of Pollio, at the time of the Pact of Brun- 
disium, their total and their prestige had sunk still further— 
except for the dynasts Antonius, Octavianus and Lepidus, only 
four of them find any mention in subsequent history. 1 

The years before Actium filled up the gaps. The Senate which 
acclaimed Augustus and the Republic restored could show an 
imposing roll of consulars, perhaps as many as forty. For the 
future, the chief purpose of these principes was to be decorative. 
Except for Agrippa, only six of them are later chosen to command 


Cf. above, p. 197. 



388 TIIE GOVERNMENT 

armies, as legates or proconsuls. 1 There were good reasons for 
that. 

Rome and Italy could be firmly held for the Princeps in his 
absence by party-dynasts without title or official powers. In 26 
b.c. Taurus was consul, it is true; but the authority of Agrippa, 
Maecenas and Livia, who ruled Rome in secret, knew no name or 
definition—and needed none. The precaution may appear ex¬ 
cessive. Not in Rome but with the provincial armies lay the real 
resources of power and the only serious danger. It was not until 
a century elapsed after the Battle of Actium, until Nero, the last 
of the line of Augustus, had perished and Galba assumed the 
heritage of the Julii and Claudii, that the great secret was first 
published abroad—an emperor could be created elsewhere than 
at Rome. 2 Everybody had known about it. 

After the first settlement Augustus in no way relaxed his 
control of the armies, holding the most powerful of them through 
his own legates. Three military provinces, however, were go 
erned by proconsuls. But they too were drawn from his pa 
tisans. For the present, peace and the Principate were thi 
safeguarded. But the mere maintenance of order did not ful 
the ambition of the Princeps or justify his mandate. There was 
hard work to be done in the provinces and on the frontiers, 
calling for a perambulatory Princeps or for consorts in his powers. 
In 27 B.c. Augustus had set out for the West without delay; and 
of the first fourteen years of his Principate the greater part was 
spent abroad, in Spain (27-24 b.c.), in the East (22 -19 b.c.) and 
again in Spain and Gaul (16-13 B.C.). In the East, prestige was 
his object, diplomacy his method. 3 The threat of force was 
enough. The King of the Parthians was persuaded to surrender 
the captured standards and Roman soldiers surviving from the 
disasters of Crassus and Antonius; and an expeditionary force 
commanded by the stepson of the Princeps imposed without 
fighting a Roman nominee on the throne of Armenia (20 19 B.c.). 4 
Spain and Gaul were very different. It was necessary to sub¬ 
jugate the Asturians and Cantabrians, open up the Alpine passes, 
survey, organize and tax the provinces of Spain and Gaul, build 

1 Above, p. 327 f. 

2 Tacitus, Hist. 1,4: ‘evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae 
fieri.’ 

1 On policy and events in the Hast, cf. above all J. G. C. Anderson, CAR x, 
239 ff. 

4 Suetonius, Tib. 9, 1 ; Dio 54, 9, 4 f.; Velleius 2, 94, 4 &c. On this matter, cf. 
now L. R. 'Paylor, JfRS xxvi (1936), 161 ff. 



THE GOVERNMENT 389 

roads, found cities and provide for the veterans. By 13 B.c. 
Augustus and his subordinates could show a stupendous achieve¬ 
ment to their credit. 

The outcome of the crisis of 23 b.c. furnished a deputy-leader 
and a partner in the government of the provinces. Agrippa was 
active in the East in 23- 22 B.c., in the West in 20 19 B.c., when he 
completed the pacification of Spain. But the constitutional powers 
and the effective position of Agrippa were soon augmented in a 
measure that none of the agents of the drama of 23 B.c. could have 
foreseen. Before the year was out, Marcellus, the nephew of the 
Princeps and husband of Julia, died. The widow was consigned to 
Agrippa. As Maecenas his enemy put it, there was no choice: 
Augustus must make Agrippa his son-in-law or destroy him. 1 
Then in 18 B.c. the imperium of Agrippa was augmented, to cover 
(like that of Augustus since 23 B.c.) the provinces of the Senate. 
n 'ore than that, he received a share in the tribuniciapotestas . 2 The 
puty was soon on his travels again and back at his work. After a 
ourn of four years as vicegerent of the East, Agrippa came to 
me in 13 b.c., to find Augustus newly returned from Spain 
1 Gaul. During the last fourteen years, they had seldom been 
together in the same place. Demanded by the needs of govern¬ 
ment, the separation of the two dynasts also helped to remove 
causes of friction and consolidate an alliance perhaps by no means 
as loyal and unequivocal as the Roman People was led to believe. 

In this year a public monument called the Ara Pacts was 
solemnly dedicated. 1 Peace called for new and greater wars. The 
legions were rejuvenated and disciplined, for by now the veterans 
of the Civil Wars had been established in Italian and provincial 
colonies. Fresh material and a better tradition took their place. 
Augustus in the same year promulgated regulations of pay and 
service which recognized at last the existence of a standing army 
and consecrated the removal of the legions from the field of 
politics. Never again was provision for the soldier at the end of 
service to coerce the government and terrify the owners of pro¬ 
perty—he was to receive a bounty in money. 

The army now numbered twenty-eight legions. Of these, 
fourteen or fifteen were now available in the provinces of the 
northern frontier, from Gaul to Macedonia: a great advance 

' Hio 54, 6, 5. 

2 lb. 54, 12, 4f. On his powers, cf. M. Reinhold, Marcus Agrippa (1933), 98 flf. 
Whether or no he should be called co-regent is a question of terminology. 

3 Res (Jestae 12. The monument was not completed and inaugurated until 9 B.c. 



390 THE GOVERNMENT 

was designed all along the line. 1 lllyricum is the central theme, 
and the extension of lllyricum to the bank of the river Danube 
is the cardinal achievement of the foreign policy of Augustus. 2 
His own earlier campaigns had been defensive in purpose; nor 
had the Balkan operations of M. Licinius Crassus greatly aug¬ 
mented the province of Macedonia. In the first years of the 
Principate the imperial frontier on the north-east consisted of 
two senatorial provinces, lllyricum and Macedonia, flanked and 
guarded each by a dependent principality, namely by Noricum 
and by Thrace. The Roman territory was narrow and awkward, 
lacking above all in lateral communications—there was (and is) 
no way along the littoral of the Adriatic. The Augustan plan 
sought to rectify these defects by winning a land route from Italy 
to the Balkans and an adequate frontier. This was the essential 
and the minimum. An advance from the side of Gaul into Ger¬ 
many might shorten communications yet further, bind together 
the European provinces and avert the danger made manifest and 
alarming during the Triumviral period, that the Empire might 
split into two parts. 

By 13 b.c. a firm beginning had been made. The conquest of 
the Alpine lands, prepared by the competent soldier P. Silius as 
proconsul of lllyricum in 17 and 16 b.c., 3 was consummated by 
Tiberius and Drusus in converging and triumphant campaigns 
(15 b.c.). Silius has almost faded from historical record: the two 
Claudii, the stepsons of the Princeps, had their martial exploits 
commemorated by a contemporary poet. 4 

The kingdom of Noricum was annexed about the same 
time. 5 6 Then came the turn of lllyricum and the Balkans. In 
14 or 13 b.c. in lllyricum M. Vinicius began the Bellum Pannoni - 
cum . 0 In Macedonia M. Lollius (19-18 B.c.) and L. Tarius Rufus 

1 Cf. JRS xxiii (1933), *9 ff- A number of legions recently withdrawn from 
Spain reinforced the armies of Gaul and lllyricum; and a new legion, XXI Rapax, 
was probably enrolled about this time. 

1 For this conception of the foreign policy of Augustus, see CAH x, 355 ff.: the 
truth of the matter has often been obscured by the belief that Octavianus in 35 and 
34 b.c. conquered the whole of Bosnia and the Save valley down to Belgrade 
(which no ancient source asserts) and that the operations of Tiberius in 12 9 n.r. 
were confined to the suppression of local rebellions. 

' Dio 54, 20, 1 f. (under 16 n.c.); 1 LS 899 (Aenona in Dalmatia): *P. Silio | I*, f. 
procos. | patron. | d. d.’ Silius fought against the Camunni and Vcnnones. 

4 Horace, Odes 4, 4 and 14. 

5 Dio 54, 20, 2« Strabo, p. 206. 

6 Velleius 2, 96, 2 f.; Florus 2, 24. Dio records risings in Dalmatia in 16 b.c. 
and among the Pannonians in 14 b.c. (54, 20, 3 ; 24, 3), with no mention of M. 
Vinicius here or under 13 b.c. (54, 28, 1). It might be conjectured that Vinicius 



THE GOVERNMENT 391 

(17-16 B.c.?) had recently been employed; 1 and on this occasion 
the proconsul of Macedonia, whoever he may have been, 
was surely not inactive. Conquest had to come from two direc¬ 
tions, from the west and from the south, demanding the services 
of two separate armies. 

The supreme effort, however, was greater still. There was the 
Rhine as well. The glory of it all was intended to fall to Agrippa 
and the two Claudii. Agrippa on his return from the East went 
to lllyricum and fought a campaign in the winter of 13-12 B.c . 2 
The design, it may be conjectured, was that Agrippa should 
prosecute the conquest of lllyricum in 12 b.c. while Drusus from 
the Rhine invaded Germany and Tiberius operated in the Bal¬ 
kans. But the central column snapped. Shattered by a winter in 
Pannonia, Agrippa died in February, 12 b.c. Further, there was 
delay from the side of Macedonia. A great insurrection broke 
out in Thrace. L. Calpurnius Piso, summoned from Galatia 
with an army, was occupied in the Balkans for three arduous 
years. 3 

So it was Tiberius, as legate of lllyricum, not Agrippa, who 
subdued the Pannonians and Dalmatians (12-9 B.c .). 4 In the 
same years Drusus with the legions of the Rhine and the levies 
of Gaul invaded Germany and reached the Elbe. 5 In 9 b.c. 
Drusus died, and two more campaigns against the Germans were 
conducted by Tiberius. Then in 6 b.c. came a crisis in the family 
and the party of Augustus. Tiberius retired, bitter and contuma¬ 
cious, to a voluntary exile at Rhodes. When Agrippa, deputy 
and son-in-law of the Princeps, died six years before, Augustus 

was proconsul of lllyricum in 14 and in 13 b.c. —presumably the last proconsul 
of that province. 

1 Dio 54, 20, 3 f. (under 16 b.c.). For M. Lollius, cf. the fragment of an inscr. 
from Philippi {Vann. Jp. y 1933, 85); for L. Tarius, that from the vicinity of 
Amphipolis (ib., 1936, 18): ‘imp. Caesare | divi f. Aug. | L. Tario Ruf. pro | pr. | 
leg. x Fret. | pontem fecit.’ He is not described as ‘proconsul’. This may mean 
that the Princeps had temporarily taken over the province—or refrained from having 
a proconsul appointed. There is no record of the title of M. Lollius. 

1 Dio 54, 28, i f., cf. Velleius 2, 92, 2. Velleius says that Agrippa and Vinicius 
began the Bellum Pannonicum , which was continued and completed by Tiberius. 

3 Dio 54, 34, 5 ff.; Velleius 2, 98; Livy, Per. 140; Seneca, Epp. 83, 14. The 
three years of the Bellum Thrcicicum are either 13-11 or 12-10 b.c. According to 
Seneca ( l.c.) t Augustus gave Piso ‘secreta mandata’: in order that the legatus 
Augusti might override at need the proconsul of Macedonia? 

4 Dio 54, 31, 2 ff., &c.; Suetonius, Tib. 9, 2 ; Velleius 2, 96, 2 f.; and, of especial 

interest, Res Gestae 30: ‘Pannoniorum gentes qua[s ajnte me principem populi 
Romani exercitus nun|quam ad[i]t, devictas per Ti. [Nejronem, qui turn erat 
privignus et legatus meus, | imperio populi Romani s[ubie]ci, protulique fines 
Illyrici ad r[ip]am fluminis | Dan[u]i/ 5 For the details, CAH x, 358 ff. 



392 THE GOVERNMENT 

appeared to stand alone, sustaining the burden of Empire in war 
and peace: 

cum tot sustineas et tanta negotia solus, 
res ltalas armis tuteris, morihus ornes.' 

That was polite homage. Agrippa was gone, Taurus perhaps was 
dead by now; and Maecenas, no longer a power in politics, had 
a short time to live. But there was a new generation, the two 
Claudii, to inherit the role of Agrippa and of Taurus. 

Without the Claudii, however, the situation might well appear 
desperate for Princeps and for Empire. Who would there be 
now to prosecute the northern wars or govern the eastern world 
with special powers? An ageing despot was left stranded with 
the two untried boys, Lucius and Gaius, the sons of Agrippa, 
whom he had adopted as his own. 

Down to 13 BAugustus and Agrippa conducted or at least 
superintended the foreign and frontier policy of the Empire fro 
close at hand, with long periods of residence in the province 
Now comes a change—in part the result of accident. August 
himself never again left Italy. Agrippa had been indispensable 
the earlier years, as deputy wherever Augustus happened not 
be, above all as vicegerent of the whole East; and he was inten¬ 
ded to take supreme charge of the northern w r ars. Yet Tiberius 
and Drusus had filled the gap and borne the general’s task in 
splendour and with success. But now Drusus was dead and 
Tiberius in exile. 

The government resisted the trial. For all his capacity and 
merits, Tiberius was not the only general or administrator among 
the principes. Other competent men now emerge and succeed 
to the heritage of power and command, both nobles and novi 
homines . They had hitherto been kept in the background for 
political or dynastic reasons, for the glory of the Princeps and 
his stepsons. Of the great plebeian marshals commanding armies 
under the Principate of Augustus only one besides Agrippa, 
namely M. Lollius, is honoured by Horace with the dedication 
of an ode. 2 The nobiles can hardly be said to fare any better. 3 
To the military men who served the dynasty and the State, 
Augustus and history have paid scant requital; the record of their 
achievements has been defaced and obliterated. Above all, there 
is a singular lack of historical evidence for the nine years in which 

1 Horace, Epp. 2, 1, 1 f. 

2 Odes 4, 9. 

3 For example, Piso and Ahenobarbus receive no ode from Horace. 



THE GOVERNMENT 393 

Tiberius was absent from the service of Rome (6 b.c -a.d. 4). 
By accident or by the adulatory design of historians favourable 
to Tiberius the exploits of his peers and rivals have been passed 
over so as to create the impression that Tiberius was Rome’s sole 
and incomparable general. 1 

A system of government had by now been built up. As has 
been shown, the Princeps hesitated to entrust armies to the viri 
triumphales of the revolutionary period. After twenty years they 
were growing old or had disappeared: a new constellation of able 
and distinguished consulars was available for the needs of warfare 
and government. In the first and tentative years of the new 
dispensation Augustus held the territories and armies of his 
provincia through his legati pro praetore who, for reasons various 
and cumulative, were almost without exception praetorian in 
rank. At the same time, as more senators reached the consulate, 
sturdy men without ancestors but commended by loyalty and 
service, or young aristocrats, the sons of proscribed and defeated 
Republicans, the provincia of Augustus began to change into a 
permanent order of praetorian and consular provinces. Yet rigid¬ 
ity of system would have been foreign both to the Roman spirit 
and to the personal and opportunistic rule of the Princeps; and 
special commands could be created at will, to face an emergency 
or to promote a partisan. 

Galatia-Pamphylia, the vast province that succeeded the king¬ 
dom of Amyntas, was first organized by a legate of praetorian 
rank and was commonly reckoned as praetorian. Yet on three 
occasions at least in the Principate of Augustus, Galatia was 
governed by legates of consular standing. 2 Galatia might suitably 
rank as a frontier province; in the pacification of its southern 
boundaries King Amyntas had lost his life; and though there 
was no permanent establishment of Roman troops, the veteran 
colonies in this region served military purposes of defence. 
Further, legions were required to reduce the brigand tribes of 
the Taurus, the Homonadenses and the Isaurians. 

1 This intention is palpable and flagrant in Velleius Paterculus. The only 
military operations that he mentions during the absence of Tiberius are those of 
M. Vinicius in Germany (c. a.d. 2)—and coolly at that (2, 104, 2). Naturally 
enough, not a word of Ahenobarbus—or even of Quirinius. Dio’s sources for this 
period were in any case probably not abundant; and two pages of the manuscript 
of Dio were lost at this point. Innocent trust in the fraudulent Velleius, perhaps 
also ignorance about the condition of Dio’s narrative, has perpetuated wholly un¬ 
satisfactory beliefs about the history of this period. Certain campaigns, deliber¬ 
ately omitted by Velleius and lost from Dio, or unknown to him, may belong here. 

2 For evidence and arguments in support of this theory, cf. AT/ioxxvn (1934), 122 ff. 



394 THE GOVERNMENT 

The partition of provinces between Princeps and Senate in 
27 B.c. was likewise neither final nor systematic. Augustus might 
be requested by the Senate either to nominate a proconsul in an 
emergency or to take a province into his charge for short or for 
long periods. Nor were the public provinces classified as prae¬ 
torian and consular. Africa, it may be presumed, was governed 
from the beginning by men of consular rank, perhaps Asia as 
well. Illyricum, as long as it was senatorial, and Macedonia, 
while it retained legions, can furnish examples of consular pro- 
consuls. The Senate retained Africa, a province of no little 
importance from its constant and arduous wars: the garrison may 
not always have been as small as the single legion that remained 
there from the last years of Augustus onwards; 1 2 and although no 
proconsul after Balbus triumphed, the governors, being legally 
independent of the Princeps, conducted wars under their own 
auspices. But the Senate lost the other two armies. In 12 b.c. 
Augustus took over Illyricum;- and, either after the campaigns 
of Tiberius and Piso and the first stage in the pacification of the 
Balkans (c. 9 b.c.), or some dozen years later, the legions of 
Macedonia were removed from the proconsul and assigned to the 
governor of a new province to the north, the imperial legate of 
Moesia. 3 When both Illyricum and the Rhine army had been 
divided in the last years of the Principate, there existed seven 
military commands held by imperial legates of consular rank; 
of these, five lay along the northern frontier of the Empire, em¬ 
bracing no fewer than fifteen legions. The contrast with the 
three provinces of 27 b.c. illustrates the change both in administra¬ 
tion and in foreign policy. 

All new conquests or annexations had fallen to the share of the 
Princeps: he also took over Sardinia, and kept it. 4 To the Senate 
he haa restored no military territories, but only, from time to 
time, certain peaceful regions, namely the southern portions of 


1 The legion XII Fulminata may have been in Africa c. a.d. 3 (ILS 8966). 

2 Dio (54, 34, 4), dating the transference to 11 B.c., assigns as cause the need for 
military protection—which fits his conception of the original partition of provinces 
in 27 B.c., and reveals its own inadequacy. It is here assumed, though it cannot be 
proved, that M. Vinicius was the last proconsul, Tiberius the first imperial legate, 
of Illyricum. 

3 For the dating to this period, cf. JRS xxiv (1934), 113 ff., with an inclination 
to the later years. It could, however, be urged that the new command was set up 
as a result of the campaigns of Piso. The first clearly attested legate of Moesia is 
the consular A. Caecma Severus in a.d. 6 (Dio 55, 29, 3). 

4 Dio 55, 28, 1 (a.d. 6). Other acquisitions were Galatia, Raetia, Noricum and 
Judaea. 



THE GOVERNMENT 395 

Gaul and Spain (Narbonensis and Baetica) and the island of 
Cyprus. 1 This looked well—and mattered little. In 27 b.c., the 
Senate provided proconsuls for eight provinces; in a.d. 14 
for ten. 

In the appointment of governors, the Princeps encouraged 
youth as well as rewarded experience. The young consul of 
thirty-three did not have to wait too long for a province—Africa 
or Asia might be his by the working of the lot after an interval of 
five years. But favour could secure curtailment of legal prescrip¬ 
tions, and that not merely for princes of the blood. Ahenobarbus 
was proconsul of Africa four years after his consulate; 2 Paullus 
Fabius Maximus and Asinius Gallus governed Asia after an even 
shorter interval, perhaps of barely two years. 3 As for his own 
province, the Princeps was not restricted in any way—his especial 
favourites, Tiberius and Drusus, commanded armies in their 
twenties. Patronage was justified in its results—and patronage 
was no new thing at Rome. 

Under the Republic the command of an army was the reward 
of birth, ambition or greed, to be won at the cost of intrigue and 
corruption. Noble families enlisted whole provinces in their 
clientela and sought to exercise hereditary rights—hence the 
resentment of an Ahenobarbus when Caesar monopolized Gaul for 
many years. It does not follow that the wars waged by nobles or 
politicians were always futile or disastrous. The Romans were at 
least preserved from the dreary calamities that so often attend 
upon the theoretical study of the military art or on a prolonged and 
deadening course of professional training. They kept their heads 
clear for decision and for action. Where native ability and the 
inherited habit and prerogative of leadership were not enough, 
the proconsul could invoke the advice of experienced soldiers. 
The centurions provided the bone and nerves of the Roman 
army; and senior centurions were normally summoned to the 
generals council. Again, the equestrian officer might turn out to 

* Cyprus and Narbonensis in 22 B.c. (Dio 54, 4, 1). The date at which Baetica 
was severed from Hispania interior and transferred to the Senate has not been 
recorded. Hardly perhaps as late as 2 B.c., as Dessau argued, adducing ILS 102. 
Perhaps in the period 16 13 b.c., when the Princeps himself visited Spain. Two 
armies still remained for a time in Spain in the two provinces of Ulterior (Lusitania) 
and Citerior (Tarraconensis). Cf. below, p. 401. 

1 ILS 6095. 

3 Paullus Fabius Maximus {cos. 1 1 b.c.), was proconsul of Asia {OG 1 S 458), 
probably in 9 b.c. (for the arguments, P-W vi, 1782); C. Asinius Gallus (cos. 8 b.c.), 
certainly in 6 5 B.c., ILS 97. Fabius is described as avo ttJ<> ckclvov s' /rat 
yvwiirjs an^araXfUvos (OGIS 458 II, 1. 45). 



396 THE GOVERNMENT 

he a valuable person, with long years of continuous service, skilled 
to lead native cavalry and to provide for commissariat. 

Not all men of senatorial rank were untried in active warfare. 
The proconsul could choose S iri militares’ as his legates. Piso 
was not himself a soldier, but he took to Macedonia competent 
legates; and Cicero in Cilicia was well served. 1 When Pompeius 
got for Caesar the Gallic command he gave him Labienus, who 
must have had previous experience. 2 * Another Pompeian from 
Picenum, Afranius, had served under his patron continuously, 
in the Spanish wars and against Mithridates. 5 He was one of the 
three legates who governed Spain for Pompeius. Of the others, 
the obscure Petreius was also in high repute as a military man. 4 
He may have served in Spain before—Varro certainly had, and 
Varro, whom posterity knows as a learned antiquary, was no 
doubt a competent administrator. 

In this matter the Principate introduced no startling novelties. 
As before, senior centurions and equestrian officers were a 
repository of wisdom; both centurions passing into the militia 
equestris and knights promoted to the Senate, like Velleius Pater¬ 
culus, often had a useful record behind them. For the rest, young 
sons of senators, aspirants to the senatorial career, serve as military 
tribunes, sometimes as praefecti equitum as well. 5 So great was 
the emphasis laid by Augustus on military service that he would 
even place two senators’ sons in charge of a single regiment of 
auxiliary cavalry. 6 After the quaestorship or the praetorship, the 
senator might command a legion—this post was no innovation, 
but the stabilization of a practice common enough in the armies 
of Pompeius and Caesar and extended during the revolutionary 
wars. 7 But even so, in the fully developed system of the Princi- 


1 Among Piso’s legates were Q. Marcius Crispus and L. Valerius Flaccus (In 
Pisoncm 54). Cicero had C. Pomptinus (Ad Jam. 15, 4, 8). Flaccus and Pomptinus 
are described by Sallust ( BC 45, 2) as ‘homines militares’. Rightly so, as their 
careers demonstrate. On Q. Marcius Crispus, cf. above, pp. 64; 111 ; 199. Cicero 
calls him ‘virum fortem in primis, belli ac rei militaris peritum’ (hi Pisonetn 54). 

2 That is, on the assumption that Labienus was, from the beginning, a partisan 
of Pompeius (JRS xxvm (1938), 113 ff.). 

J Plutarch, Scrtorius 19; Orosius 5, 23, 14; Plutarch, Pompeius 34, 36 and 39; 
Hio 37, 5, 4 f. 

4 Sallust, BC 59, b: ‘homo militaris, quod amplius annos triginta tribunus aut 
praefectus aut legatus aut praetor cum magna gloria in excrcitu fuerat.’ 

5 For example, ILS 911 f. Cf. Suetonius, Divus Aug. 38. 

6 Suetonius, Divus Aug . 38, 2. 

7 At this time, they are often, perhaps usually, quaestorian in rank, cf. ILS 931 
and 945. The first person to be described as legate of a definite legion is P. Corne¬ 
lius Lcntulus Scipio, holding that post in a.d. 22 (ILS 940, cf. Tacitus, Attn. 3, 74). 



THE GOVERNMENT 397 

pate, the previous experience as military tribune and legionary 
legate gained by a man described as a Vir militaris*, and destined 
after his consulate to govern one of the great military provinces, 
had not always been very long or very thorough. 

The difference lies more in continuous and repeated provincial 
commands. Of an unbroken career at the head of armies or in 
the government of provinces, legates of Pompeius and Caesar like 
Afranius and Labienus and generals of the revolutionary age such 
as Taurus and Canidius were models and precedents. A great 
school of admirals had also been created. After Actium, no place 
for them. 1 But the lesson was not lost. Augustus perpetuated the 
premium on specialization, for political no less than for military 
reasons: elderly novi homines were safe. Lollius and Quirinius, who 
won the consulate by ‘militaris industria\ subsequently as con¬ 
sular governed important provinces, one after another. These 
were among the greatest, but they were not exceptional. Vinicius 
is a close parallel; it is unfortunate that so little is known of the 
careers of L. Tarius Rufus and C. Sentius Saturninus. 2 'The most 
striking example of continuous service is afforded by the novus 
homo from Picenum, C. Poppaeus Sabinus (cos. a.d. 9). During 
twenty-five years this man had charge of Moesia, for most of 
the time with the provinces of Macedonia and Achaia as well.' 

But Poppaeus belongs rather to the reign of Tiberius, notorious 
for long tenures- and for an almost undisturbed peace on the 
frontiers. The historical record of the wars of Augustus is frag¬ 
mentary and capricious. Design has conspired with accident, for 
the Princeps intended that the military achievements of his rule 
should be glorified at the expense of their real but subordinate 
authors. Many important military operations are barely known, 
other campaigns no doubt have lapsed into oblivion. No com¬ 
plete record exists either of governors of the military provinces 
or of the careers of the most eminent generals and administrators 
in the New State. None the less, certain examples are pertinent 
and suggestive. 

The problems of the eastern provinces were political rather 
than administrative. The legate of Syria might be a menace to 
the government in Rome. After Varro, Agrippa is the next 
attested legate, governing the province in absentia ; and there may 
have been no separate legate for Syria during the period of his 

1 Fleets are now commanded by Roman knights, c.g. ILS 2688 and 2693. Eater 
imperial freedmen appear. 2 Cf. above, p. 330. 

’ Tacitus, Ann. 1, 80; 6, 39; I)io 58, 25, 4. 



398 THE GOVERNMENT 

sojourn as vicegerent of the eastern lands (17-13 B.c.). That 
was one solution of the political danger. But Agrippa departed 
in 13 B.c. M. Titius, who possessed a long experience of the 
East from his Antonian days, appears then to have been appointed 
legate in Syria: 1 his successor was the trusty and competent C. 
Sentius Saturninus. 2 But Syria, though more prominent in 
historical record, was not the only Eastern province that called for 
special treatment. The legates of Galatia are an instructive class. 

Four men of note governed Galatia at different times, one 
when praetorian, the others consular. M. Lollius (cos. 21 b.c.) 
carried out the annexation of the province after the death of 
Amyntas; then he saw service in Macedonia as proconsul (19-18 
b.c.) and governed Gallia Comata (17-16 B.c .). 3 After that, a 
long lapse until Lollius emerges as guide and counsellor to the 
young Gaius Caesar when he went to the East in 1 b.c . 4 L. Cal- 
purnius Piso (cos. 15 b.c.) is attested in Galatia-Pamphylia c. 13 
b.c . 5 His earlier posts are unknown, dubious or controversial. 6 
From Galatia he was summoned to Thrace with an army, where 
he was engaged for three years; after that, he was proconsul of 
Asia; 7 subsequently, it may be, legate of Syria. 8 

1 He is attested at some time between 13 and 8 B.c. (Josephus AJ 16, 270), 
perhaps as early as 13 B.c., cf. T. Corbishley, JRS xxiv (1934), 43 ff. Strabo (p. 
748) says that he was governor at the time of the surrender of the Parthian hostages, 
which may fall in 19 b.c. and not, as usually assumed, <\ 13 ro B.c\, cf. L. R. Taylor, 
JRS xxvi (1936), 161 ff. Hence the possibility that M. Titius was legate of Syria 
on two separate occasions. The argument for assigning to him the inscr. from 
Tibur (ILS 918) is not so strong. Cf. n. 8. 

2 Josephus, AJ 16, 344, &c. The date of his command is probably 9 6 b.c. 
(P-W 11 a, 1519 ff.). There might be room for another legate between Titius 
and Sentius, but there is no point in inserting one. 

J Dio 54, 20, 4 ff.; Velleius 2, 97, 1 ; Julius Obsequens, De prodigiis 71(17 B.c.). 

4 Below, p. 428 f. 5 Dio 54, 34, 6, cf. Atith. Pal. 6, 241. 

6 Orosius (6, 21, 22), who assigns to him an Alpine war, and Suetonius (f)c rhet. 
6), describing a case tried before him when he was proconsul, at Mediolanium, arc 

very puzzling. On the career of this man, cf. now E. Oroag in PIR 2 , C 289. 

7 Anth. Pal. 10, 25, 3 f. Possibly also the inserr. I(jRR iv, 410 f. (Perganuim) 
and HCH v (18.81), 183 (Stratonicea): though these could as well refer to L. Cal- 
purnius Piso (the augur), cos. 1 B.c., proconsul of Asia (ILS 8814). 

8 No evidence: but there would be room for him in the period 4 1 b.c. The 
dedication from Hieropolis-Castabala in Cilicia, published in Jahrcshcftc xvm (1915), 
Beiblatt 51, would not be sufficient or secure support, for it may belong to another 
L. Piso at a slightly later date; and Castabala was the capital of a native princi¬ 
pality. It would he possible, however, to assign to Piso the acephalous and much- 
contcsted elogium from Tibur (ILS 918). This inscr. records the career of a man 
who was legate of Augustus in a province the name of which is lost but which 
earned him ornamenta triumphalia for a successful w ar, then proconsul of Asia, then 
legate again, of Syria. This would fit Piso and his Bellum Thracicum quite well; 
but Quirinius is still not absolutely excluded (below, p. 399, n. 4). 



THE GOVERNMENT 399 

P. Sulpicius Quirinius (cos. 12 B.c.) passed through a long 
career of faithful service to Augustus and to the State. Among 
his achievements (perhaps before his consulate) was a campaign 
against the Marmaridae, a tribe of the African desert dwelling to 
the south of Cyrene. 1 At some time in the twelve years after his 
consulate Quirinius governed Galatia and subdued the Homona- 
denses. 2 In a.d. 2, after the disgrace and death of Lollius, Quiri¬ 
nius took his place with C. Caesar. 3 Three or four years later he 
was appointed legate of Syria, in which capacity he annexed 
Judaea after the deposition of Archelaus the ethnarch, introduced 
Roman rule by ordering a census and crushed the insurrection 
provoked by that alien and distasteful novelty (a.d. 6). 4 

M. Plautius Silvanus (cos. 2 B.c.) held in succession the posts 
of proconsul of Asia and imperial legate of Galatia, fighting there 
and suppressing the mountaineers of Isauria (a.d. 6). 5 In that 
year the Pannonians and Dalmatians rose in revolt. As twenty 
years before in the Thracian War of Piso, so now the Balkan 
lands called again for reinforcement from the armies of the East. 
In A.D. 7 Silvanus brought troops to the Balkans, fought along 
with Caecina Severus, the legate of Moesia, in a great battle all but 
disastrous for Rome, and remained for two years at the head of 
his army till the insurgents were overcome. 6 

Though incomplete, these annals of four senatorial careers of 
service are instructive and impressive. Quirinius was certainly 
the first senator of his family, so perhaps was Lollius. Silvanus 
and Piso, however, were nobiles. 

These men all held high command in the provinces of the 
East—with which, indeed, both Silvanus and Piso could recall 
hereditary ties. 7 More important than Syria or Galatia were the 
northern armies with the two great commands in Illyricum and 

1 Florus 2, 31. Date unknown: r. 15 b.c., as proconsul of Crete and Cyrene? 
cf. E. Groag, P-W iv a, 825 fF. 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 48; Strabo, p. 569. Date unknown: the most plausible, 9-8 or 

4 3 b.c., cf. Klio xxvn (1934), *35 ff. 3 Below, p. 429. 

4 Josephus, AJ 17,355, cf. 18, i,&c.; ILS 2683. Cf. also St. Luke 2,1 f.;Acts 5,37. 
Attempts to discover an earlier governorship (and, by implication, to invent an earlier 
census of Judaea) always seem to break down somewhere. Though ILS 918 could 
be claimed for Quirinius (and the war which he fought as legate of Galatia-Pamphylia 
c. 9 8 or 4 3 B.c.), it cannot be made to prove two governorships of Syria. 

s Dio 55, 28, 2 f.; SEG vi, 646 (a dedication to Silvanus at Attaleia in Pamphylia). 
For his proconsulate of Asia, IGRR iv, 1362 (nr. Thyatira). 

6 Velleius 2, 112, 4; Dio 55. 34, 6; s6, 12, 2 ; ILS 921 (near Tibur). 

7 Piso’s father, of philhellenic tastes, had been proconsul of Macedonia. For the 
activity of Plautii in the East, cf. MQnzer, RA 43 f. On that family, cf. also 
below, p. 422. 



4 oo THE GOVERNMENT 

on the Rhine, a more searching trial for the Princeps and his party 
when Drusus was dead and Tiberius in exile. Whatever had 
happened at Rome, there would have been a lull in operations 
after the conquest of Illyrictim and the invasions of Germany. 
Other generals in their turn would have commanded in the north. 
Moreover a large number of legionary soldiers, their service 
expired, were dismissed in the years 7-2 b.c. But no ground was 
lost during the decade when 'Tiberius was absent from the con¬ 
duct of Rome’s foreign policy (6 b.c.-a.d. 4). On the contrary, 
expeditions were made across the Danube in these years, the 
tribes beyond the river were intimidated and Bohemia, where 
Maroboduus, the monarch of the Marcomanni, had built up a 
powerful dominion, was isolated on west and east. If they could 
with accuracy and completeness be recovered, the full record of 
wars and generals in the north would reveal momentous political 
facts. 1 When Tiberius went from Illyricum to the Rhine after 
Drusus’ death he was succeeded by Sex. Appuleius (cos. 29 B.c .); 2 
the next legate was L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who marched 
across Germany from the Danube to the Elbe; 3 after him and 
before A.i). 4 are perhaps to be inserted the names of M. Vinicius 
and Cn. Cornelius Lent ulus. 4 

The situation in the Balkans in these years is doubly obscure. 
The army of Macedonia may still have been retained by the pro- 
consul or may already have been transferred to the legate of 
Moesia. 5 6 * However that may be, no consulars can be established 
in this period, only praetorians in charge of the army, namely P. 
Vinicius and P. Silius, the sons of two of Augustus’ marshals. b 

1 Dateless operations on and beyond the Danube are attested by Res Gestae 30; 
Florus 2, 28 f.; Tacitus, Ann. 4, 44; Strabo, pp. 303 5; and by the elogium with 
some confidence to be assigned to M. Vinicius (ILS 8965). On the propriety of 
putting them all in this blank period 9 B.c. a.d. 6 (or even more narrowly, 6 B.c. 

A. i). 4), cf. CQ xxvn (1933), l 4 2 ff -JRS xxiv (1934), 11 3 ff- Certainty cannot be 
attained, or even precision in detail. But this dating will fit the military situation 
—and the condition of the ancient sources for the period. 

z Cassiodorus, Ghron. min. 2, 135. Dio 55, ioa, 2; 'Pacitus, Amt. 4, 44. 

4 The date of M. Vinicius’ command (ILS 8965) is quite uncertain. A. v. 
Premerstein argues for 14 13 B.c. (when he is in fact attested in Illyricum at the 
beginning of the Bellum Pannonicum ), cf. Jahreshefte xxvm (1933), 140 ft’.; xxix 
( 1 934 )> ho ff. C. Patsch (Wiener S-B. 214, 1 (1932), 104 ff.) and others are in 
favour of 10 b.c. On Cn. Cornelius Lcntulus (Florus 2, 28 f.; Tacitus, Ann. 4, 44), 
cf. now E. Croag, PIR -, C 1379, who demonstrates that he is the consul of 14 b.c., 
not, as hitherto believed, of 18 b.c. Dates for Lentulus range from 15-14 

B. c. (C. Patsch, o.c. , 91 ff.) to a.d. 11 (A. v. Premerstein, Jahreshefte xxix, 60 ff.). 

5 Above, p. 394. 

6 Velleius 2, 101, 3(1 b.c.), cf. 1 GRR 1, {>54, from Callatis (for P. Vinicius). The 

successor of P. Silius may well be Sex. Aelius Catus (cos. a.d. 4), for a certain Aelius 



THE GOVERNMENT 401 

As for the Rhine, it is not certain who followed Tiberius in 
6 b.c . 1 Before long, however, that important command, with five 
legions, was held by Ahenobarbus and by Vinicius in immediate 
succession. 2 Likewise to the period of Tiberius’ absence belongs 
the Spanish command of Paullus Fabius Maximus and the 
Syrian governorship to which P. Quinctilius Varus passed after 
his proconsulate of Africa. 3 There was also fighting in Africa. 4 

These are not the only names that mattered in the critical 
period in question, but they are enough to illuminate the varied 
composition of the elite of the governing class, to set forth the 
manner in which theprincipes were employed. Including the four 
governors of Galatia already discussed, there is a total of ten 
eminent men. Of these, three are novi homines , next to Agrippa 
and Taurus the most distinguished of their class, namely Lollius, 
Quirinius and Vinicius, all with long careers of useful service. 
Of the rest, no fewer than five were related in some way to the 
family of the Princeps. The significance of this fact for the secret 
politics of the period is evident and enormous. 5 

Thus the New State endured, well equipped with ministers 
of government. But it was not in the provinces only that the 
principes were trained and yoked to service. The city state of 
Rome lacked permanent administrative officials or boards to pro¬ 
vide for roads, water, police and the food supply. What slight 
and intermittent care these services received was the duty of the 
aediles and of the censors—if and when censors were appointed. 
For certain services in the city Augustus devised posts to be held 

t*.itus transplanted fifty thousand Getae across the Danube (Strabo, p. 303). On the 
position of these praetorian commanders, proconsuls of Macedonia or legates of 
Moesia, cf. JRS xxiv (1934), 125 ff., with a slight preference for the former alterna¬ 
tive: the latter might seem more plausible. Further, the consular legate Cn. 
Cornelius Lentulus, usually assigned to Illyricum, could quite well have been a legate 
of Moesia in the period 9 b.c.-a.d. 6. 

1 Probably not Ahenobarbus, attested here by Dio under the year 1 B.c. (55, 
10a, 3): possibly Saturninus, if an earlier command than that of a.d. 4-6 could be 
assumed (cf. Velleius 2, 105, 1); below, p. 435, n. 4. 

2 Ahenobarbus (Dio 55, ioa, 3); Vinicius (Velleius 2, 104, 2, under a.d. 2). 

3 Paullus Fabius Maximus is attested in 3/2 B.c., ILS 8895 (Bracara), cf. CAL 
11, 2581 (Lucus Augusti). If it could be proved that he was legate of Citerior rather 
than of Ulterior, it would show that by now the region of Asturia-Callaccia had 
been transferred from the latter province to the former—and that the two Spanish 
armies had by now been fused into one. Which is not unlikely. As for Varus, his 
proconsulate of Africa probably belongs to 7-6 b.c., and his governorship of Syria 
(Josephus, AJ 17, 8g) begins in 6 b.c., cf. PIR', Q 27. 

4 L. Passienus Rufus earned ornamenta Iriumphalia and the title of imperator 
c. a.d. 3 (Velleius 2, 116, 2; ILS 120, cf. 8966); and Cossus Cornelius Lentulus fought 
in a.d. 5 6 (Velleius 2, 116, 2; Florus 2, 31; Orosius^ 6, 21, 18; Dio 55, 28, 3 f.). 

5 Below, p.421. 



402 THE GOVERNMENT 

by Roman knights. For the rest, he called upon senators; and 
the presidents of the various boards were commonly men of 
consular standing. An ancient authority states a reason for these 
innovations—that as many senators as possible should take an 
active part in administration. 1 

In the past the generals of the Republic had commonly 
devoted the profits of victory to the construction of roads and 
public buildings. The years before the final struggle witnessed 
a grandiose spectacle when the leading partisans of Antonius and 
Octavianus competed to adorn the city of Rome. Augustus soon 
after Actium set about restoring temples; and the principes viri 
prosecuted the programme of public works. Statilius Taurus 
completed his amphitheatre and Cornificius rebuilt the temple of 
Diana, both from war-booty; and Balbus’ theatre also com¬ 
memorated a triumph (19 b.c.). 2 Augustus himself repaired the 
Via Flaminia. 3 The charge of other roads radiating from Rome, 
fell to some of his generals who had recently celebrated triumphs 
—both Messalla and Calvisius Sabinus dealt with the Via Latina. 4 
Agrippa’s affectionate care for aqueducts did not lapse with his 
memorable aedileship, but was sustained till his death, with the 
help of a large staff of slaves and w orkmen w hich he had recruited 
and trained. 5 

That could not go on. After 19 B.c. there were no more 
triumphs of senators; and in any case Augustus would have 
wished, even if he had not been forced, to substitute regular 
administration for private initiative or mere magistracies, like the 
offices of aedile and censor. Two incidents hardened his policy. 

In 22 B.c. he secured the appointment of a pair of censors, the 
first for many years. They were Plancus and Paullus Aemilius 
Lepidus, colleagues who proved discordant with each other—and 
perhaps recalcitrant to the Princeps. They may have suspected, 
and with reason, that he intended to devolve upon them certain 
unpopular functions like that renewed purification of the Senate 
which he desired and which he was himself compelled to under¬ 
take four years later. Plancus and Lepidus resigned before the 
year was out. 

Then came the affair of Egnatius Rufus, which showed how 
dangerous it was to resign functions of public utility to individual 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 37. z lb. 29, 5. 

3 Res Gestae 20; Dio 53, 22, 1 f.; ILS 113 (Ariminum). 

4 Tibullus 1, 7, 57 ff. (Messalla); ILS 889 (Sabinus). 

5 Frontinus, De aq. 98 and 116. 



THE GOVERNMENT 403 

enterprise. Augustus supplied the aediles with a body of fire¬ 
fighting slaves—it was not until a.d. 6 that he took the step of 
appointing an equestrian official, th c praefectus vigilum . 1 In the 
meantime a number of permanent boards of senators had been 
established. The first dealt with roads (20 B.c.); 2 it was com¬ 
posed, however, not of consulars but of praetorians. At a later 
date a definite body assumed the maintenance of temples and 
public buildings. 3 When Agrippa died in 12 b.c. the State took 
over his trained staff; of the cur a aquarurn thus officially consti¬ 
tuted the first president was Messalla. He held the post until 
his death. Ateius Capito followed, then the aged Tarius Rufus. 4 
The regulation of the course of the river Tiber and the pre¬ 
vention of floods was entrusted to the consuls of the year 8 B.c.; 
the first standing commission dates from a.d. 15 or not long 
after. 5 

Other small groups of consulars were established from time 
to time, such as an Economy Commission of three members in 
a.d. 6, or the two curatores annonae of that year and the next, 
whose function passed at once to an equestrian prefect. 6 Again, 
appeals from the provinces were delegated to consulars. In 4 b.c. 
a new procedure was devised to try certain cases of extortion— 
the judges were to be four men of consular rank, together with 
three praetorians and two other senators. 7 

Casual or continuous employment was thus devised for a large 
number of consulars. An anomalous dignity remains to be men¬ 
tioned, that of praefectus urbi. In the nature of the matter, it is 
difficult to see how the Princeps could be represented by a deputy, 
and the behaviour of Messalla, appointed praefectus urbi in 26 B.c. 
and resigning the office after a few days, because he did not 
understand its functions or because he disapproved, need not be 
too harshly scrutinized. 8 Ten years later, when Augustus de¬ 
parted on his second visit to the provinces of the West, Statilius 

1 Dio 55, 26, 4 f. 

2 lb. 54, 8, 4. On the various curatores , cf. CAH x, 198 fF. 

3 ILS 5939 ff.: the curatores aediurn sacrarum et operum locorumque publicorum, 
as they were later called. 

4 Frontinus, De aq. 99 and 102. 

5 On the work of the consuls of 8 B.c., ILS 5923 a-d; the first commission, 
Tacitus, Ann. i , 79, cf. ILS 5893. 

b Dio 55, 25, 6; 26, 2. C. Turranius is attested as praefectus annonae in A.D. 14, 
Tacitus, Ann. 1,7. 

7 Cyrene Edicts v, 11. 107 fF. (for a text of these documents, JRS xvn (1927), 34 fF.). 
On consulars, each put in charge of appeals from a province, Suetonius, Divus 
Aug. 33, 3. For a committee of consulars on foreign affairs in a.d. 8, Dio 55, 33, 5. 

8 Tacitus, Ann . 6, 11. 



4 o 4 THE GOVERNMENT 

Taurus was made praefectus urbi ; 1 Taurus’ successor, after an 
interval of unknown length, was the illustrious L. Calpurnius 
Piso, with whom the office became a standing institution. 2 

In these ways, by his own efforts and by the creation of special 
officials or permanent commissions, Augustus provided for the 
health, the security and the adornment of the city which was the 
capital of Italy and the Empire. He boasted that he found Rome 
a city of brick and left it a city of marble. 3 The observation was 
true in every sense. Augustus, who waived the name of Romulus, 
could justly claim to be the second founder of Rome. 

A government had been established. The principes viri were 
tamed, trained and harnessed to the service of the Roman People 
at home and abroad. Plebs and army, provinces and kings were 
no longer in the clientela of individual politicians. 4 At Rome the 
Princeps seized control of all games and largesse. The descen¬ 
dants of great Republican houses still retained popularity with the 
plebs of Rome and troops of clients, arousing the distrust of the 
Princeps; 5 6 not always without cause. But careful supervision 
at first and then the abolition of free election soon diminished 
the personal influence of the nobiles. After the constructions of 
the viri t Hump hales, the friends of Augustus, there was scarcely 
ever a public building erected in Rome at private expense. Nor 
any more triumphs. At the most, a stray proconsul of Africa, 
fighting under his own auspices, might assume the title of impera- 
torp Before long that honour too would be denied. 

Military glory was jealously engrossed by the Princeps and his 
family. The soldiers were his own clients—it was treason to 
tamper with them. Hence constant alarm if generals by good 
arts or bad acquired popularity with the troops, and in time even 
an edict forbidding senators to admit soldiers to their morning 
receptions. 7 For the senator no hope or monument of fame was 
left. Italy by the Via Aemilia and Narbonensis by the Domitia 

1 Dio 54, 19, 6. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 6, 11. For difficulties about the date, cf. PlR 2 y C 289. No 
praefectus urbi is mentioned in A.n. 14. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 28, 3; Dio 56, 30, 3 f. (not m the mere literal sense). 

4 On this, A. v. Prernerstein, Vorn Wcrdcn u. Wesen dcs Principals , 112 ff. 

5 This is the ‘pars populi integra et magnis domibus adnexa’, contrasted with 
the clients of the Princeps, the ‘plebs sordida et circo ac theatris sueta’ (Tacitus, 
Hist. 1,4). 

6 e.g., ILS 120. The last was Q Junius Biaesus in A.n. 23 (Tacitus, Ann. 3, 74). 
The practice of awarding ornamenta triumphalia instead of a triumph began to¬ 
wards 12 u.c. (Dio 54, 24, 8; Suetonius, Tib. 9, 2). 

7 Suetonius, Divus Claudius 25, 1. 



THE GOVERNMENT 405 

recalled the exploits of noble houses; and towns and trophies 
commemorated the glory and the vanity of the great Pompeius. 
Of all that, nothing more. Domitius and Titius were the last com¬ 
moners to give their names to cities, and that was in far Cilicia. 

No senator might depart from Italy and visit the provinces, 
save permission obtained. 1 Nor could he now discover fields to 
spread his personal influence. No governor now was able to 
enlist whole communities and wide regions in his clientela.- 
Desccndants of Pompeius survived: no chance that they would 
be allowed to hold high command in Spain. The earlier class of 
provincial magnates recall by their gentilicia the proconsuls who 
gave them the franchise; the newer Roman, however, bears for 
the most part the name of the reigning dynasty of imperial Rome. 
Nor might grateful natives any more exalt a patron with divine 
honours. The cult of the ruler was given system and extension 
partly to combat this practice and gain a monopoly of loyalty for 
the government. The last proconsul with a priest consecrated to 
his worship was L. Munatius Plancus; 3 and the last to give his 
name to commemorative games was Paullus Fabius Maximus. 4 

On all sides the monarchic Princeps robbed the other principes 
of power and honour. In the interests of an ordered common¬ 
wealth, consulate and military command were removed from 
competition—and from profit, for the governor now received a 
salary in money. 5 Politics can be controlled but not abolished, 
ambition curbed but not crushed. The strife for wealth and power 
went on, concealed, but all the more intense and bitter, in the heart 
of the governing oligarchy, in court and cabinet. 

1 Dio 52, 42, 6 (except Sicily, and later, Narbonensis). 

‘ Caesar’s law about the colony of Urso forbids senators and their sons from 
becoming patroni (ILS 6087, c. 130). The central government under the Principate, 
however, was strong enough to do without such a prohibition. 

J BCH xii (1888), 15 (Mylasa, in Caria): Upevs Azvkuw Moviv.tuw. 

4 1 GRR iv, 244 (Ilium). 

s Dio 53, 15, 4 f. There is no evidence, however, about the date of this 
innovation. 



XXVII. THE CABINET 


‘ T7 ADEM magistratuum vocabula.’ 1 Names persist every- 

T; where while substance changes. Like the individual sena¬ 
tor, the Senate as a body preserves dignitas but loses power as the 
Princeps encroaches everywhere, grasping more and more. He 
retains his imperium in the city of Rome ; 2 he controls admission to 
the high assembly; he takes charge of public provinces; he appoints 
proconsuls, though with respect for forms preserved ; 3 and he con¬ 
veys requests, modest but firm, to the governors of provinces. 4 

Yet not entirely at the expense of the Senate. That body even 
regains for a time the prerogative of coining in gold and silver. 5 
It acquires new functions, derived from its practice of taking 
cognizance of matters affecting the safety of the State in an 
emergency, and gradually develops into a high court of justice 
under the presidency of the consuls. 6 Augustus had frequent 
resort to the People for the passing of his laws. But the practice 
of comitial legislation soon decays: senaius consulta then became 
common, gradually acquiring force of law. Yet once again, be¬ 
hind the nominal authority and government of the Roman Senate 
the real and ultimate power needs to be discovered. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,3. 

2 As was permitted in 23 b.c. (Dio 53, 32, 5). This does not mean, however, 
that he exercised proconsular authority in Rome or in Italy, cf. A. v. Premerstem, 
Vom Werden u. Wesen des Prinzipats , 235 f. According to Dio (54, 10, 5), in 19 b.c:. 
Augustus was given consular imperium for life: for the interpretation of this, see 
Premerstein (ib., 237 f.). 

3 Provinces taken over: Illyricum in 12 B.C., Sardinia in a.d. 6. Proconsuls 
nominated, not only in a.d. 6 (Dio 55, 28, 2), but much earlier, for example P. 
Paquius Scaeva again in Cyprus: ‘procos. iterum extra sortem auctoritate Aug. 
Caesaris | et s.c. misso ad componendum statum in reliquum provinciae Cypri* 
{ILS 915); and, presumably, M. Lollius c. 19-18 B.c. (Dio 54, 20, 3) in Macedonia; 
and, no doubt, many others. The language in which the cities of Asia extol Paullus 
Fabius Maximus is suggestive—a7ro rrjs ckclvov Seftasr teat yviop-qs aTreoraApievos 
(OGIS 458, 11, 1 . 45). 

4 Compare Augustus’ own observations ( Cyrene Edicts 1, 1 . 13 f.): hoKovvl pot 
KaAais Kal irpooriKovTws Trotrjaetv ol rrjv KpT^TtKrjU Kal Kvp^uatKTjv inapyrjav kcl 9 - 
e^ovres ktA. 

5 In 19 B.c., but only for a few years, after which Augustus established an 
imperial mint at Lugdunum, cf. H. Mattingly, BMC , R . Emp. 1, xiii ff. 

6 On this, see M. Hammond, The Augustan Principate (1933), 170 ff.; Stuart 
Jones in CAH x, 169 ff.; H. Volkmann, Zur Rcchtsprechung im Principat des 
Augustus (1935), 93 ff* There can hardly be any doubt that their powers were 
developed—and used, though not frequently—in the time of Augustus, cf. J. G. C. 
Anderson, JRS xvii (1927), 47 f. 



THE CABINET 407 

When he comes to narrate the Principate of Augustus, Cassius 
Dio complains that the task of the historian has been aggravated 
beyond all measure—-under the Republic the great questions of 
policy had been the subject of open and public debate: they were 
now decided in secret by a few men. 1 He is right. If Augustus 
wished his rule to retain the semblance of constitutional liberty, 
with free elections and free debate in the Senate, it is evident 
that there would have to be expert preparation and firm control 
behind the scenes of all public transactions. The era of cabinet 
government has set in. The Senate was no longer a sovran body, 
but an organ that advertised or confirmed the decisions of the 
government; senatorial rank and the tenure of high office were 
no longer an end in themselves but the qualification for a career 
in the service of the State. 

The principes of the Free State might take counsel together, 
in a more or less public fashion, about matters of weight; and 
le power exerted by such extra-constitutional forces as the aucto - 
itas of senior statesmen holding no public office, the intrigues 
nf ladies at the centre of high society or hanging ambiguous about 
its fringes, the influence of wealthy knights, whether as individuals 
or as corporations—all this has sufficiently been demonstrated. The 
domination of Pompeius gave a foretaste of secret rule—his 
'Vlytilenean client Theophanes was an intriguer as well as an 
historian; his friend, the affluent senator Lueceius, gave valued 
counsel; and Balbus was instrumental in forming a famous com¬ 
pact. Cabinet government already existed in the brief Dictatorship 
of Caesar. While the Senate held empty debate or none at all, and 
prominent dignitaries waited muttering on his threshold, the Dicta¬ 
tor quietly worked out his plans in the company of his intimates. 
Octavianus inherited the policy—and no little part of the person¬ 
nel, for the names of Balbus, Oppius and Matius soon emerge in 
the entourage of the young adventurer. The hazards and intrigues 
of the revolutionary era set a high premium on secret counsel and 
secret diplomacy; and the Princeps retained unimpaired his native 
distrust of oratory, of democracy and of public debate. 

The taking of counsel before grave decisions was a habit 
ingrained in the Roman whether he acted as parent, magistrate 
or general. Augustus could have invoked tradition and propriety, 

' Dio 53, ig, 3 : Ik &i)Tov ypovov tKeivov ra fiev nXetw Kpv<f> a Kai 81* diropprj- 
Tiov yLyvzcrdai Tjp^aro, et dc rrov rtva teal hr}p.o<nev0€iri t dX A* dve^eXtyKra y€ ovra 
amoTclrcu- kcll yap Xeyecrdai teal 7rpd.TT€ oBai navra rrpos ra rwv aet KparovvTwv 
twv T€ 7Tapa&vva(7T€v6vTLov o(f>l01 fiovXijpaTa viroirrev^rai. 



4 o8 THE CABINET 

had he needed or cared to justify the various bodies of advisers 
that are attested in his Principate. No sooner was the Free State 
restored than Augustus hastened to palliate any inconveniences 
that might arise from that alarming novelty. He instructed the 
Senate to appoint a committee to consult with him and prepare 
public business. The committee, comprising the consuls, one 
member from every other board of magistrates and fifteen senators 
chosen by lot, was to change every six months. 1 It appears to have 
persisted throughout his reign, being especially useful in the last 
years, when the Princeps seldom cared to enter the Curia; in 
A.D. 13 its composition was modified and its powers were so far 
enhanced as to encroach seriously upon the functions of the full 
Senate. 2 But this was not a permanent change; and the com¬ 
mittee seems subsequently to have lapsed. 3 

The Senate no less than the assembly of the sovran people was 
a cumbrous and unsatisfactory body to deal with, and the position 
of the Princeps was delicate and perilous, being held to repose 
upon general consent and modest executive powers. It was 
therefore advisable for the government—that is, the Princeps and 
the party-dynasts—to sound the feelings of the senators, avoid 
surprises and shocks each way in their reciprocal dealings, and 
gently prepare the way for innovations. 

The mechanical choice by lot of a small council of senators 
and their inevitable impermanence, restricted as they were to 
six months of the year, shows clearly that it was a committee, not 
a cabinet—an organ of administration, not of authority. As 
it was there, it might suitably be employed by the Princeps as 
a group of counsellors and assessors for judicial business as 
well. 4 The Princeps possessed magisterial powers and gradually 
usurped jurisdiction: to aid him he would summon from time 
to time a consilium , drawn from personal friends, representative 
senators and legal experts. 

The rotatory committee of the Senate and the various judicial 
consilia were open, public and unobjectionable. They facilitated 
the conduct of public business or the dispensing of justice—but 

1 Dio 53, 21,4; Suetonius, Divus Aug. 35, 3; cf. Cyrene Edicts v, 1. 87, for the 
description of the consilium : £vfif$ovAlov yvcbfxrjs o eV rfjs avyKAijrav KXrjpwrov 

caycv. 

1 Dio 56, 28, 2. 

3 Tiberius’ practice was different, and more Republican—‘super veteres amicos 
ac familiares viginti sibi e nuraero principum civitatis depoposcerat velut consilia- 
rios in negotiis publicis’ (Suetonius, Tib. 55). 

4 Hio 53, 21, 5. 




THE CABINET 409 

they did not debate and determine the paramount questions of 
governmental policy. That was the work of other bodies, which 
kept and left no written records. Their existence, their character 
and their composition must be deduced from the relations between 
the Princeps and the State - and from their effects as revealed in 
the course of events: it would have to be postulated, were it not 
flagrant and evident. The management of the Empire demanded 
expert counsel and many advisers. It will not be imagined that 
there was any permanent body of counsellors to the Princeps or 
any constitutional organ. There was no cabinet but a series of 
cabinets, the choice of members varying with the occasion. None 
the less, a certain number of prominent and representative figures 
in the Caesarian party—and certain members of the reigning family 
—were probably present at most deliberations. Whether the rule 
of Augustus be described as Republic or Monarchy, these advisory 
bodies were indispensable for the needs of government and ad¬ 
ministration. 

'Talent and experience of the most varied orders was now avail¬ 
able. Knights were eligible for administrative posts that in dig¬ 
nity and power surpassed many magistracies or proconsulates; 
their importance increased steadily as the reign drew to its close, 
now showing three new posts in the city of Rome; and knights as 
well as senators have their place in the different councils of state. 
Roman knights had been amongst the earliest friends of Augustus. 
Some attained senatorial rank. Others, like the modest Procu- 
leius, remained within their station. The greatest of all was 
Maecenas. After 23 b.c. Maecenas gradually lost ground. When 
life ebbed along with power, the descendant of kings who had led 
to battle the legions of Etruria surrendered to self-pity and the 
horror of death. 1 The better sort of Roman voluptuary waited 
for the end with fortitude and faced it like a soldier. 

Next in power and next in crime was C. Sallustius Crispus, 
who inherited the name, the wealth and the luxurious tastes of 
his great-uncle, the Sabine historian and moralist. Like the 
Maecenas of earlier days, the subtle Sallustius concealed the 
qualities of decision and vigour beneath the ostentation of indo¬ 
lence and vice. 2 Maecenas had suppressed the conspiracy of 
young Lepidus: it was Sallustius who procured the removal of 

1 Seneca, /?/>/>. ior, ioff, on Maecenas’ ‘turpissimum votum’, namely, ‘vitadum 
superest, bene est.’ 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 30: ‘suberat tamen vigor animi ingentibus negotiis par, eo 
aerior quo somnum et inertiam magis ostentabat.’ 



4 J0 THE CABINET 

Agrippa Postumus. 1 History records no such acts of public 
service to the credit of P. Vedius Poll io, the son of an opulent freed- 
man and an intimate friend of the Princeps. The loyal Vedius 
constructed, to honour Augustus, a Caesareum in the city of 
Beneventum. 2 lie also formed the habit of feeding his lampreys 
with living slaves. The scandal of the fish-ponds was too much 
even for Augustus, notoriously indulgent to the vices of his friends. 3 

Yet Vedius Pollio had once been useful—he appears to have 
been active in the province of Asia shortly after the War of 
Actium, perhaps setting in order the system of taxation. 4 When 
the civil service had developed, freedmen did not hold the pro- 
curatorships of the imperial provinces. But it was a freedman 
called Licinus who assessed and exploited for Augustus the re¬ 
sources of Gaul. 5 * 

The treasury of the Roman State was placed (in 23 B.c.) under 
the charge of two praetors each year, chosen by lot A’ The finances 
of a great empire cannot be conducted in so simple a fashion. 
There must be financial experts lurking somewhere. Moreover, 
it was no doubt only the residue of the revenues from his own 
provinces that Augustus paid into the aerarium , which he also 
subsidized from his own private fortune. 7 Augustus had huge 
sums of money at his disposal—he paid the bounty to discharged 
soldiers, granted donations to army and plebs and carried out 
public works. E\)r the management of the various funds he would 
have resort to the tried skill of slaves and freedmen. These 
financial secretaries later emerge as ministers of State, under 
Caligula and Claudius: they had been there for a long time. 8 9 

Senators might preside over the treasury, but the Senate had 
no control of financial policy, no exact knowledge of the budget 
of Empire. The rationarium imperii was kept by Augustus, to be 
divulged only if and when he handed in his accounts to the State. 
In these matters Augustus required expert advisers. As time 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 6. 

2 JLS 109: ‘P. Veidius P. f. Pollio | Caesareum imp. Caesari Augusto | et 
coloniac Bcneventanae.’ 

J Dio 54, 23; Pliny, NH 9, 77; Seneca, De ira 3, 40, 2; De clem. 1, 18, 2. 

4 CIL ill, 7124 mentions a constitutio of Vedius Pollio. His name occurs on coins 
of Tralles, and perhaps his portrait also, cf. BMC, Greek Coins: Lydia , 338. 

5 Dio 54, 21. 6 lb. 53, 32, 2. 

7 On these matters, cf. esp. T. Frank, JR.S xxm (1933), 143 ff. 

8 The freedman Polybius, who wrote out a part of Augustus’ will (Suetonius, 
Divus Aug. 101, 1) is perhaps the person who turns up as a studiis and a libellis 

under Claudius. 

9 It was handed to the consul in 23 b.c., Dio 53, 30, 2. 



THE CABINET 411 

went on, knights who had served in the provinces as procurators 
became available—above all the Prefects of Egypt, a land strictly 
managed on monopolistic principles. The first Prefect had suc¬ 
cumbed to a political intrigue, the second had been unsuccessful 
in his invasion of Arabia. More modest and more useful men are 
later found, such as C. Turranius, C. Julius Aquila and M. 
Magius Maximus. These persons, it is true, have no known 
history among the equestrian councillors of the Princcps, but any 
Prefect of Egypt could furnish information about taxation and 
fiscal policy—to say nothing of the food supply and policing of 
a great capital. 1 The knight Scius Strabo, a personal friend of the 
Princeps, won prominence in the late years of Augustus. Seius 
was Prefect of the Guard in a.d. 14 2 

As well as finance, many matters of domestic and foreign policy 
demonstrated the need for skilled advice and summary decision. 
A standing committee enabled the Princeps to keep in touch with 
the Senate—but who decided the business to be brought before 
that convenient and docile committee? The auctoritas of a senior 
statesman might be suitably invoked to express or to guide the 
opinion of the Senate, in show spontaneous and independent. 
Plancus proposed that the Senate should confer the name of 
Augustus upon Caesar’s heir. It will be inferred that the motion 
was inspired in every sense of the term, that other public pro¬ 
posals of those momentous sessions had been shaped in private 
before being sponsored by eminent senators—if possible by such 
as had a reputation for independence. The eloquent Messalla 
may have played his part along with the diplomatic Plancus. It 
was Messalla who twenty-five years later introduced the decree 
of the Senate naming Augustus the Father of his Country. 3 

Religion, law and literature all came under guidance, from 
above and from behind. The care of the national cult might 
appeal to the antiquarian, the administrator or the politician, 
even though his character and habits were the reverse of sacer¬ 
dotal. One of the most eminent authorities and agents in this 
department of public service appears to have been Cn. Domitius 
Calvinus, the oldest surviving consular in the early years of the 
Principate. 4 A sacerdotal lawyer, conservative and pliable, was to 

1 Observe the raising of new taxes in a.d. 6 , the institution of the aerarium 
militate and, soon after, of the cura annonae. 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 1,7. His son was at once appointed to be his colleague, ib. 1, 24. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 58, 2. 

4 That is, if the magister fratrum Arvalium on the fragment of 20 B.c. (CIL I®, 
p. 214 f.) was Calvinus: the fragment Eph. Ep. vm, p. 317, probably of 21 b.c., 



412 THE CABINET 

hand in the person of Ateius Capito. 1 For the promotion of 
literary talent and the artistic dissemination of opinion favourable 
to the government, Maecenas knew no peer and left no successor. 
In the same year as Maecenas, Horace died: Virgil had gone 
eleven years before. In the last period of Augustus’ rule, litera¬ 
ture not merely languished from the loss of its shining glories— 
it appears to have broken away from the control of the govern¬ 
ment. Augustus had grown hard and bitter with age; and Sallus- 
tius Crispus, the successor of Maecenas, was perhaps lacking in 
tact and skill. 

Whatever nominal and legal prerogatives the Senate and 
People still retained in foreign policy mattered little in compari¬ 
son with the fact that the Princeps, in virtue of his imperium , con¬ 
trolled the greater number of the military regions directly, and all 
provinces indirectly. The statute of 23 B.c. may not have given 
the Princeps the power of making war and peace. 2 That was not 
necessary. Embassies from foreign powers might be introduced 
to the Senate after a suitable rehearsal. The assembly of the 
People might declare war—but the People did not decide against 
whom; the wars, however grandiose and arduous they might be, 
were not always dignified with that name and status, but were 
conveniently regarded as the suppression of rebels or brigands. 
The dependent princes bore the traditional and honoured title of 
‘Allies and Friends of the Roman People’: in fact they were the 
clients of the Princeps,and they knew r it. "Their kingdoms were 
his gift, precarious and revocable. When Herod the Great died 
(4 b.c.), the future status of Judaea was debated in a crow T n coun¬ 
cil at which were present Gaius Caesar, the adopted son of the 
Princeps, and a number of distinguished personages, among them 
(it may be conjectured) men well versed in eastern affairs, former 
governors and procurators. 3 If not themselves absent on pro¬ 
vincial commands, men like Lollius, Quirinius and Piso will have 
had something to say. 

It was not intended that there should be foreign wars in the East. 
But the needs of West and North w r ere urgent, organization as 

mentions a Cn. Dom[itius], who can hardly he anybody else. On this, and on other 
religious activities of Calvinus, cf. K. Bormann, Festschrift fur O. Bcnndvrf (1898), 
283 ffi. By a strange fate Calvinus’ colleague in the consulate, M. Valerius Messalla 
Rulus, who wrote on augury, may still have been alive. Messalla was augur for 
fifty-five years (Macrohius 1, 9, 14). 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 75, cf. above, p. 382. 

2 Cf. W. Kolbe, Aus Roms Zeitwendc , 51. It is not safe to infer from the Lex de 
imperio Vespasiani , as many do, that Augustus was given this power, explicitly. 

3 Josephus, AJ 17, 229. 



THE CABINET 413 

well as fighting, and grave decisions to be taken about the fron¬ 
tiers of Empire. Veterans of the triumviral period such as Cal- 
visius, Taurus and Messalla were available to give advice; while 
Silius, Lollius and Vinicius soon gained experience in the frontier 
provinces, the consulate, and, no doubt, a place in councils of 
State. Silius had conducted mountain warfare in Spain and in the 
Alpine lands. Vinicius knew both Gaul and Illyricum. Lollius 
was not famed for service in eastern provinces only. After his 
consulate he governed Macedonia and Gaul in succession; it 
may be presumed that he had formed certain impressions 
about the problems of the northern frontier and was willing to 
communicate them. Above all, Agrippa was there. The Romans 
thought in terms of roads . 1 The grandiose design of shortening 
the northern frontier and shortening the lines of communication 
between West and East, executed as an impressive example of 
converging strategy, may not unfairly be attributed to the great 
road-builder and organizer. He did not live to see the consum¬ 
mation of the campaigns in Illyricum, in the Balkans and beyond 
the Rhine. 

Agrippa died and then Drusus, Tiberius retired morosely to 
Rhodes. A crisis had supervened, at the very core of the party. 
Another followed before long, and Augustus loudly lamented the 
loss of his two most trusty counsellors, Agrippa and Maecenas: 
had they lived, certain things would never have happened . 2 

In the elaborate fiction of Cassius Dio, the decision to restore 
the Republic, or rather, as that historian believed, to consolidate 
the monarchy, was formed after private debate with those 
two party-magnates, the soldier and the diplomat. The one ad¬ 
vocated a republic, the other monarchy. The contrast was unreal, 
the choice did not arise. What was decided by the advisers of the 
Princeps was merely the definition of official powers, the phraseo¬ 
logy to disguise them and all the elaborate setting of a solemn 
political show. The taciturn and business-like Agrippa would 
have been of little use. Nor would Taurus, the other soldier and 
administrator. Even lawyers could have been dispensed with, for 
the formulation was of the simplest. Politicians were needed. 
They were available among the party-chieftains. 

1 Which explains the origin of Narbonensis (the high road to Spain), Macedonia 
(the Egnatia) and the dimensions of Cilicia when Cicero was its governor. 

~ Seneca, De ben. 6, 32, 2 : ‘horum mihi nihil accidissct, si aut Agrippa aut Maece¬ 
nas vixisset.’ Seneca's comment is instructive and cynical—‘non cst quod existi- 
memus Agrippam et Maecenatem solitos illi vera diccre: qui si vixissent, inter 
dissimulantes fuissent* (ib. 4). 



4 i4 THE CABINET 

The historian might with no less propriety have turned his 
talents to the elucidation of the ‘constitutional’ crisis of 23 B.c. 
by composing speeches for the principal agents in the secret 
struggle round a moribund despot. Modesty or ignorance de¬ 
terred him from the attempt. It would have required imagination 
that he did not possess and facts that he could never discover. 
Dio was well aware that no authentic record of such momentous 
transactions was ever published by their agents. 

Contemporary rumour and subsequent deductions (supported 
by Tiberius’ voluntary exile in Rhodes), though correctly diag¬ 
nosing the nature of the crisis, were rather at a loss to explain 
Agrippa’s dispatch to the East. The gossip that so constantly 
asserted the preponderating influence of Livia Drusilla in the 
counsels of the Princeps, though sometimes exaggerated and 
always malevolent, w*as all too well founded. The propaganda 
of Octavianus had been merciless against Fulvia, the wife of 
Antonins; and Rome had fought a national war against a political 
woman, the Queen of Egypt. The moral programme of the New 
State was designed to keep w'omen in their place: the name of 
Livia is never mentioned by an official poet like Horace. 

The precaution seems excessive. In a Republic like that of 
Pompeius, Livia would have been a political force, comparable to 
her kinswoman Servilia. When Augustus took counsel with his 
consort, he was careful to set down his views in writing beforehand. 
The dominance of Livia was illustrated in a mysterious episode that 
attracted the inventive fancy of an unknown rhetorician. 1 It was re¬ 
ported that Cn. Cornelius Cinna, a grandson of Pompeius Magnus, 
was conspiring against the Princeps. Augustus sought the advice 
of Livia and received a long curtain-lecture. On the following day 
he summoned Cinna to his presence and delivered a hortatory 
address, inspired by clemency and appealing to good sense, for 
the space of two unbroken hours. The malcontent was over¬ 
whelmed and converted. 

The Princeps, the members of his family and his personal 
adherents were the real government. The Principate arose out 
of usurpation. It never forgot, it never entirely concealed, its 
origin. But the act of usurpation could be consummated in a 

1 Reproduced by Dio 55, 14 ff. (a.d. 4), and by Seneca, De clem. 1,9 (apparently 
indicating the period 16-13 B - c -> but inaccurately). Suetonius and Tacitus know 
nothing of this ‘conspiracy’. The fact that Cinna was consul in a.d. 5 may have 
had something to do with the origin of the story, as well as explaining Dio’s date. 
Yet Cinna’s consulate was probably due, not so much to Augustus, as to the Repub¬ 
lican Tiberius, mindful of his Pompeian ties (below, p. 424 f.). 



THE CABINET 415 

peaceful and orderly fashion, so that the transmission of power 
appeared to be no different from its first legitimation, namely, 
a special mandate conferred for merit and by consent. In 23 B.c., 
after an open crisis and a secret struggle, the modification of 
the Princeps’ statute and the conferment of special powers upon 
his deputy proceeded without any unfortunate incidents in public. 
With the death of Augustus, the Princeps’ powers lapsed—he 
might designate, but he could not appoint, his heir. When the 
Principate was first transmitted to a successor, that person already 
held sufficient powers to preclude any real opposition. 

But the problem was to recur again and again. The garrison 
of the city imposed Claudius in succession to his nephew Caligula, 
when Rome lacked a government for two days and in the Senate 
men debated about a restoration of the Republic, with rival candi¬ 
dates already asserting their claims to monarchy. The provincial 
armies elevated Vespasian to the purple after civil war. But the 
proclamation of a new Emperor in default of a clearly designated 
heir was not always due to threat or exertion of open violence. 
The deed could be done in secret—and in advance. The rule 
of Nerva by its impotence threatened to precipitate a civil war. 
It might be conjectured that the danger was averted by a veiled 
coup d'etat on the part of certain military men who constrained 
Nerva to adopt and designate as his successor M. Ulpius Traianus, 
the governor of Upper Germany. 1 Trajan himself in his lifetime 
gave no unequivocal indication of his ultimate intentions. Rumour 
asserted that the adoption of Hadrian was managed, when Trajan 
was already defunct, by Plotina his wife and by the Prefect of the 
Guard. 2 

It is evident that Augustus and his confidential advisers had 
given anxious thought to the problem of providing for the suc¬ 
cession to the Principate—or rather, for the continuity of the 
government. No less evident the acute differences of opinion 
about that important matter, and bitter rivalries. The final and 
peaceful result was not attained without dissensions in the 
cabinet, several political crises and several political murders. 

Agrippa and Livia had thwarted the dynastic ambitions of the 
Princeps in the matter of his nephew Marcellus. Their triumph 
was brief and transient. The death of Marcellus, a heavy calamity 

1 Groag inclines to suspect the agency of L. Licinius Sura (P-W xm, 475). 
Pliny, Epp, 9, 13, 11, attests the danger from the provincial armies. Late in 97 or 
early in 98 Syria is found to be without a consular legate ( 1 LS 1055). 

z Dio 69, 1; SHA Hadr. 4, 10. 



416 THE CABINET 

and much bewailed, was compensated by a new policy, in which 
Agrippa and the sons of Livia in turn were to be the instruments 
of Augustus in ensuring the succession for heirs of his own blood. 
Julia was to provide them. 

In 21 B.c. the marriage of Agrippa and Julia was solemn¬ 
ized. In the next year a son was born, named Gains. When a 
second son, Lucius, followed in 17 b.c. the Princeps adopted 
the two boys as his own. In all, this fruitful union produced 
five children—two daughters as well, namely Julia and Agrippina, 
and the posthumous infant Agrippa, an ill-favoured child 
(12 B.c.). 

Tiberius succeeded Agrippa as husband of Julia, protector of 
the young princes and minister of the Princeps in war and 
government. The marriage was unwelcome, so gossip asserted. 
Tiberius dearly loved his own plebeian Vipsania. 1 The sober 
reserve of his nature was ill matched with the gay elegance of 
Julia—to call it by no more revealing name. It was the duty and 
the habit of the Roman aristocrat to subordinate the tender 
emotions to the advancement of the family and the good of the 
Republic. But w r as Augustus’ design beneficial to the Roman 
People? Of that, a patriotic Roman might have his doubts. The 
New r State was fast turning into the New Monarchy. 

As the dynastic aspirations of Augustus were revealed, more 
openly and nearer to success with the growth to manhood of 
Gaius and Lucius, the position of Tiberius became irksome; and 
some spoke of estrangement from his wife, embittered by the 
politic necessity of preserving appearances. 2 Whatever the be¬ 
haviour of Julia, that was not the prime cause of the crisis of 
6 B.c. Tiberius was granted the tribunicia potest as for a period 
of five years—yet even this hardly meant the succession. The 
measure would be a visible reminder and check to conspirators. 
For the rest, Augustus could rely on Tiberius’ submission and 
his own prestige. 3 Tiberius had conquered Illyricum and ex¬ 
tended the gains of Drusus in Germany: he was now to depart 
from Rome and set in order the affairs of the East (no doubt with 
a special imperium). While Tiberius governed for the Princeps 
abroad, maintained the stability and augmented the prestige 

1 Suetonius, Tib. 7, 2 f. 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 53; Dio 55, 9, 7. According to Velleius (2, 99, 1) Tiberius 
retired ‘ne fulgor suus orientium iuvenum obstaret initiis’. That was the reason 
which Tiberius himself gave—at a later date (Suetonius, Tib. 10, 2). 

3 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 56 : ‘sic cohibcri pravas aliorum spes rebatur; simul modestiae 
Neronis et suae magnitudim fidebat.’ 



THE CABINET 417 

of the dynasty, the rule of the young princes was to be consoli¬ 
dated in his absence, at his expense and at the expense of the 
Roman People. In the last six years, Tiberius had hardly been 
seen in Rome; and there was no urgent need of him in the East. 
Augustus wished to remove for a time this unbending and in¬ 
dependent character, to prevent him from acquiring personal 
popularity in the capital and strengthening the resources of the 
Claudian faction. 

Tiberius revolted. Obdurate against the threats of Augustus 
and the entreaties of his mother, he persisted in his intention to 
abandon public life and showed the strength of his determination 
by a voluntary fast. They could not stop him. Tiberius retired 
to the island of Rhodes, where he remained in exile, nourishing 
his resentment upon a diet of science and letters, llis enemies 
called it secret vice. 1 Like Agrippa, beneath the mask of service 
and subordination, Tiberius concealed a high ambition; like 
Agrippa, he would yield to Augustus— but not in all things. His 
pride had been wounded, his dignitas impaired. But there was 
more than that. Not merely spite and disappointment made the 
first man in the Empire next to the Princeps refuse his services 
to the Roman People. 

The purpose of Augustus was flagrant, and, to Tiberius, 
criminal. It was not until after his departure that Augustus 
revealed the rapid honours and royal inheritance that awaited the 
princes. But that was all in the situation already. Nobody could 
have been deceived. In 6 b.c. there was an agitation that Gaius 
should be made consul. 2 Augustus expressed public disapproval 
—and bided his time with secret exultation. 3 In the next year it 
came out. Gaius was to have the consulate after an interval of 
five years (that is, in a.d. 1); and three years later the same dis¬ 
tinction was proclaimed for Lucius, his junior by three years. 
The Senate voted Gaius this unprecedented dispensation for 
the supreme magistracy: the corporation of Roman knights 
hailed him as Princeps Iuventutis. 4 Thus the two orders, which 
with separate functions but with coalescence of interests not 
only represented, but were themselves the governing and ad¬ 
ministrative classes, recognized the son of Augustus as a prince 
and ruler; and men came to speak of him as a designated 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,4: *iram ct simulationem et sccrctas libidines.’ 

2 Dio 55, 9, 2. 

3 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 3: ‘necdum posita puerili praetexta principcs iuventutis 
appellari, destinari consules specie recusantis flagrantissime cupiverat.’ 



418 THE CABINET 

Princeps. 1 To Gaius and Lucius in a private letter Augustus 
expressed his prayer that they should inherit his position in their 
turn. 2 

That was too much. Tiberius and Drusus had received special 
dispensations and early distinction, it is true. Tiberius became 
consul at the age of twenty-nine—but that was after service in 
war, as a military tribune in Spain, a general in Armenia and in 
the Alpine campaigns. The stepson of Augustus, he had bene¬ 
fited from that relationship. Yet even had Livia not been the 
wife of the Princeps, her son under the revived aristocracy of the 
New State would have reached the consulate in his thirty-third 
year, like his peers in that generation of nobiles. Privilege and 
patronage, and admitted as such—but not outrageous. To bestow 
the supreme magistracy of the Roman People upon an untried 
youth in the twentieth year of his age, that was much more than a 
contradiction of the constitutional usage and Republican language 
of the Principate: it revolted the genuine Republican feelings and 
good sense of a Roman aristocrat. Illicit and exorbitant power, 
‘regnum’ or ‘dominatio’ as it was called, was no new thing in the 
history of Rome or in the annals of the Claudian house. The 
hereditary succession of a Roman youth to monarchy was some¬ 
thing very different. 

Tiberius dwelt at Rhodes. His career was ended, his life pre¬ 
carious. Of that, none could doubt who studied dynastic politics 
and the working of human character. It took an astrologer, the 
very best of them, to predict his return. 3 Much happened in that 
dark and momentous interval, little can be known. 4 With the 
steady and public progress of monarchy the importance of cabinet 
government is enhanced; secret policy and secret strife in the 
counsels of the Princeps determine the government of Rome, the 
future succession and the destiny of the w r hole world. 

1 Ovid, Ars am. i, 194: ‘nunc luvenum princeps, deinde future senum.’ The 
colony of Pisa, mourning his death, describes him as ‘iam designa|tu[m ijustis- 
sumum ac simillumum parentis sui virtutibus principem’ ( ILS 140, 1 . 13 f.). 

2 Quoted by Gellius (15, 7, 3): ‘nam, ut vides, KXtfxaKrrjpa communem seniorum 
omnium tertium et sexagesimum annum evasimus. deos autem oro ut, mihi 
quantumcumque superest temporis, id salvis nobis traducere liceat in statu rei 
publicae felicissimo avhpayaOovvrwv vp.cov kcll biabexopuevcuv stationem meam.’ This 
was written later, of course, on Augustus’ own birthday in a.d. i. 

3 Suetonius, Tib. 14, 4, cf. Tacitus, Ann. 6, 21. 

4 The narrative of Dio is brief and fragmentary, in part preserved only in 
epitomes; while Velleius records only trouble and disaster for Rome in the absence 
of Tiberius. For the internal history cf., above all, E. Groag, Wiener Studien XL 
(1918), 150 ff.; xli (1919), 74 ff- 



XXVIII. THE SUCCESSION 


T HREE dangers ever beset the domination of a party—there 
may arise dissension among its directors, the nominal leader 
may emancipate himself from control, or he may be removed by 
death. For the moment, Augustus had his way. He was left in 
6 B.c. with the two boys, the one in his fourteenth, the other in 
his eleventh year. The Princeps had broken loose from the 
Caesarian party, alienated his deputy and a section at least of his 
adherents. While Augustus lived, he maintained peace and the 
dynasty. But Augustus was now aged fifty-seven. The crisis 
could not long be postponed. 

A loyal but not ingenuous historian exclaims that the whole 
world felt the shock of Tiberius’ departure. 1 Not at all: both the 
Princeps and his party were strong enough to stand the strain. 
Though a certain lull prevailed now on the northern frontiers, 
natural if not necessary after the great wars of conquest, the 
effort of Rome did not flag or fail. The governmental oligarchy 
could furnish adequate generals and sagacious counsellors, the 
most prominent among whom have already been indicated. The 
Princeps now had to lean heavily on the loyalty and tried merit 
of certain novi homines . For many years nothing had been heard 
of Lollius and Vinicius. Their emergence is dramatic and im¬ 
pressive. Close behind comes Quirinius. 

Above all, several groups of nohiles , the peers and rivals of 
Tiberius, gain splendour and power from his eclipse. Depressed 
and decimated by war and revolution, swept up into one party 
and harnessed as they had been to the service of the State, the 
nobiles now enjoy a brief and last renascence in the strange but 
not incongruous alliance of monarchy. Augustus had passed 
beyond the measure and proportions of a Roman politician or 
party leader. He had assumed the stature of a monarch and the 
sure expectation of divinity: his sons were princes and would 
succeed him. The aristocracy could tolerate the rule of monarchy 
more easily than the primacy of one of their own number. Augus¬ 
tus knew it. The ambition of the nobiles might have appeared the 
most serious menace to his rule. On the contrary, it proved his 
surest support. 

1 Velleius 2, 100, 1 : ‘sensit terramm orbis digressum a custodia Neronem urbis.’ 



420 THE SUCCESSION 

When Cinna conspired against his life—or was suspected of 
conspiracy— Augustus quietly pointed out the folly of the attempt. 
Even if he succeeded, the nobiles would not put up with Cinna in 
the place of Augustus.' Cinna was one of themselves, noble and 
patrician at that, and so was Tiberius—Augustus had never been. 
Though the nobiles despised the origin of Augustus, remembered 
his past and loathed his person, they could neither compete with 
the Din filius nor hope to supplant the patron and champion of 
the Roman People, the master of the legions, the king of kings. 
For all that, they might flourish in the shadow of the monarchy, 
prosecute old feuds, construct new alliances—in short, acquire 
a handsome share of the power and the profits. The most open 
political prize w r as the consulate. In 5 b.c. Augustus assumed 
that office, after a lapse of eighteen years, with L. Cornelius Sulla 
as his colleague. From that year the practice of appointing more 
than one pair of consuls becomes regular. 

On the Fasti now prevail the descendants of ancient houses, 
glorious in the history of the Roman Republic or more recently 
ennobled. But nobiles , and especially patricians (for the latter 
families were older than the Roman State, dynastic and even 
regal in ancestry), regarded their obligations to Rome in the 
personal light of their own ambitions. The Republic had served 
their ends, why not the Monarchy? The most sincere or most 
narrow type of Republican politician derived commonly from a 
more recent nobility, or from none at all. The firmest defenders 
of Libertas were nobles of the plebeian aristocracy; the sena¬ 
torial historians Sallustius, Pollio and Tacitus, whose writings 
breathe the authentic spirit of the Republic and the Republican 
virtues, were all sons of Roman knights, of municipal extraction; 
and the author of a patriotic epic poem on the fall of Libertas was 
a colonial Roman, M. Annaeus Lucanus from Corduba. 

Among the nobiles were magnates who stood close to Augustus 
in the inner circle of the family and close to the succession— 
‘nomini ac fortunae Caesarum proximi’. 2 Too much, perhaps, to 
hope for the power themselves—but their descendants might 
have a chance or a portion. The Princeps might die. Yet the 
princes Gaius and Lucius remained, and next to them the Clau- 
dian connexion. But with Augustus dying before his sons attained 

1 At least, so Seneca says (De clem. 1,9, 10): *cedo, si spes tuas solus impedio, 
Paulusne te et Fabius Maximus et Cossi ct Servilii ferent tantumque agmen nobi- 
lium non inania nomina praeferentium, sed eorum qui imaginibus suis decori sunt.’ 

- Cf. Vcllciuf.’ designation (2, 114, 5) for M. Acmilius Lepidus, cos. a.d. 6. 



TIIE SUCCESSION 421 

their majority, a Council of Regency, open or secret, would con¬ 
trol the government. 

It would be idle indeed to speculate upon the composition of 
a body that never came into existence, were there not attested 
certain eminent personages in the governing oligarchy whose 
claims must have been the subject of public rumour and private 
intrigue. As the family circle of Augustus at one time comprised 
no fewer than three pairs of women bearing the names Oetavia, 
Antonia and Marcella, all of whom except the daughters of M. 
Antonius were twice married, the ramifications of the dynasty 
grew ever more complex, producing by now a large number of 
collateral connexions, the husbands or the sons of the women of 
his house. Most of them were already of consular rank. 

Sex. Appuleius ( cos . 29 b.c.), a dim and mysterious figure, 
but none the less legate of Illyricum in 8 b.c., was the son of 
Oetavia, the half-sister of the Princeps. lullus Antonius (cos. 10 
b.c.), a man of taste and culture, took over from Agrippa the one 
Marcella, P. Quinctilius Varus (cos. 13 b.c.) had married the 
daughter of the other. 1 Paullus Fabius Maximus (cos. 11 b.c.) 
had taken to wife Marcia, the granddaughter of Augustus’ 
stepfather. 2 Fabius, a cultivated and diplomatic person, was an 
intimate friend of the Princeps, whose glorification he had 
assiduously propagated during his proconsulate of Asia p and he 
drew the bond tighter by giving in marriage his daughter Fabia 
Numantina to the son of Sex. Appuleius. 4 

These four consulars were perhaps not all outstanding in 
talent or very closely related to the reigning family; and only 
two of them are known to have commanded armies in the period 
of Tiberius’ seclusion. None the less, they were personages to 
be reckoned with—especially the son of M. Antonius. More 
remarkable than any of them, however, is L. Domitius Aheno- 
barbus (cos. 16 B.c.), the husband of Augustus’ own niece Antonia, 
and thus more highly favoured in the matter of political 
matches than any save Drusus (the husband of the younger 
Antonia) and the successive consorts of his daughter Julia. Mieno- 
barbus held in succession the command of the great northern 
armies, passing from Illyricum to Germany. lie is described as 
cruel, arrogant and extravagant, a skilled charioteer. 5 There was 

' Varus’ wife was Claudia Pulchra (P 1 R'\ C m(>), daughter of M. Valerius 
Messalla Barbatus Appianus (cos. 12 n.c.) and the younger Claudia Marcella. 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 1,5; Ovid, Ex Ponto 1,2, 138; Fasti 6 , 801 ff. 

' OGfS 458. ~ * 1 LS 935 - 

s Suetonius, Nero 4. 



422 THE SUCCESSION 

more in him than that—either prudence or consummate guile: his 
name finds record in no political transactions, intrigues or con¬ 
spiracies. The tumultuous history of the Ahenobarbi may have 
inculcated a rational distaste for politics and adventure—two 
members of his family perished in the wars of Marius and Sulla; 
his grandfather, the enemy of both Caesar and Pompeius, had 
fallen at Pharsalus; his father was the great Republican admiral. 

The Aemilii perpetuated their old political alliance with the 
Caesarian cause, but not through the Triumvir. His nephew and 
enemy, Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, from the Sicilian War onwards 
a personal friend of Augustus, had two wives, Cornelia and the 
younger Marcella. Paullus was now dead; his two sons by Cor¬ 
nelia, L. Aemilius Paullus ( cos . A.n. i) and M. Aemilius Lepidus 
(cos. a. i). 6), attained the distinction due to their family and their 
mother’s prayers, but not with equal fortune. 1 The elder took to 
wife Julia, daughter of Julia and granddaughter of Augustus: 
the younger was spared the perils of marrying a princess. 

Such was the group of aristocratic families entwined about the 
roots of the monarchy. Livia and the Claudian connexion were 
in low water: Tiberius lived on in exile and might never return. 
On her own side of the family she lacked relatives who might be 
built up into a faction. 2 To be sure, there were her grandchildren, 
the three children of Drusus and Antonia; two of them were art¬ 
fully interlocked with the descendants of Augustus through his 
daughter Julia, Germanicus being betrothed to Agrippina, Julia 
Livia to Gaius Caesar, the heir presumptive. The youngest 
child, Claudius, displayed neither grace of form nor intellectual 
promise. But even he could serve the political ambitions of his 
grandmother; so the young Claudius, after losing his bride Livia 
Medullina, married Urgulanilla, the daughter of M. Plautius 
Silvanus, a politician to whom the notorious friendship of his 
mother with Livia brought promotion and a career. Silvanus be¬ 
came consul along with Augustus in 2 B.c. A political alliance with 
the Plautii was good Claudian tradition. 3 So Livia worked for 
power. But it is by no means certain that Silvanus was popular 

1 Propertius 4, 11, 63ff. See Table IV at end. 

z Nothing at all is known about M. Livius Drusus Libo, cos . 15 B.c. Livia 
Ocellina, stepmother of Galba, the future emperor (Suetonius, Galba 4, 1), was a 
distant relative. Likewise Livia Medullina, who died on her wedding day 
(Suetonius, Divus Claudius 26, 1). Cf. also below, p. 425. 

3 On the Plautii, one of the earliest houses of the new plebeian nobility, see 
Mtinzer, RA , 36ff. One of them was colleague with Ap. Claudius Caecus in his 
famous censorship. It is assumed by Mtinzer that M. Plautius Silvanus (cos. 2 b.c.) 
and A. Plautius (cos. suff. 1 b.c.) descend from that family: which cannot be proved. As 



THE SUCCESSION 423 

with Tiberius. Lacking Tiberius, the Claudian party lacked a 
leader of standing in war and politics. A heavy preponderance of 
consular nobiles y consolidated by matrimonial pacts, was massed 
around the throne and the heirs presumptive and designate, 
among them many enemies, the source and seed of remembered 
rancour and postponed revenge. Yet Tiberius must have had a 
following among the nobiles. 

Of the dynastic houses of the patrician nobility now renascent, 
Aemilii and Fabii stood closely bound by ties of kinship or per¬ 
sonal alliance with the Caesarian house. Scarcely less promi¬ 
nent the Valerii, though escaping notice in the politics and the 
scandals of these years. Messalla still lived on; and he had some¬ 
thing of a party. 1 The Scipiones were all but extinct; 2 but the 
other great branch of the Cornelii, the Lentuli, rising in power 
and prolific, yet highly circumspect, perpetuated the line, evading 
entanglement in the matrimonial policies of the Princeps. 3 

In Ahenobarbus, the husband of Antonia, the great plebeian 
family of the Domitii boasted a solitary 7 but strong support, not 
far below monarchic hope. The Marcelli are close to the end, 
and the Metelli, soon to fade away, cannot show a consul at this 
time. 4 Other families dominant in the oligarchy of government 
after Sulla are now missing or sadly reduced—above all the fac¬ 
tion of the Liberators. 

Certain great houses remained, however, rivals of the Julii and 
Claudii, not invited, or perhaps disdaining, to join the inner circle 
of the dynastic group, namely the descendants of Cinna, Sulla, 
Crassus and Pompeius. Some missed the consulate and none, so 
far as is known, werepermitted by Augustus to govern the great 
military provinces. They made alliances among themselves and 
with the family of the Pisones. 5 

perhaps with certain other families in the time of Augustus, genealogical claims may 
he tenuous or dubious. These Plautii have their mausoleum near Tibur (ILS 921, &c.). 

1 Messalla’s family-relations are exceedingly complicated. He was married at 
least twice (one of his wives was probably a Calpumia, CIL vi, 29782) ; Messallinus 
{cos. 3 b.c.) and Cotta Messallinus (cos. a.d, 20) are his sons, Messalla Barbatus 
Appianus (cos. 12 b.c.) perhaps an adopted son. On the difficulties about Cotta, cf. 
PIR a , A 1488. To be noted further are connexions with the successful now homines 
M. Lollius (Tacitus, Ann. 12, 22) and Taurus: his daughter married T. Statilius 
Taurus, cos. A.D. 11 (P-W ill A, 2204). 

2 The last consul was in 16 b.c. The consul of a.d. 2 is probably a Lentulus. 

3 Namely two consuls in 18 B.c., one in 14 B.c. Then an interval, and four more 
(3 B.c., 1 b.c., a.d. 2, a.d. 10). 

4 The last consular Marcellus is Aeseminus (22 b.c.), a person of no great note 

who had been a partisan of Caesar the Dictator. As for the Metelli, the consul of 
a.d. 7 is a Junius Silanus by birth. 5 See Table V at end. 



424 THE SUCCESSION 

L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 B.c.) occupied rank and eminence 
with the foremost in the Principate of Augustus, though not seek¬ 
ing closer relationship with the reigning dynasty. From his father 
Piso inherited, along with the love of letters, good sense and the 
firm avoidance of desperate ambition or party spirit. Piso’s 
family became related to the Crassi, an alliance which brought 
enhanced splendour and eventual ruin to both houses. 1 

L. Piso was a neutral, commanding repute and even, perhaps, 
a following of his own. 2 Like the Cornelii Lentuli, Piso was no 
enemy of Tiberius. There were other nobles with influential con¬ 
nexions, such as that mild-mannered person P. Quinctilius Varus, 
who were not so deeply committed to the court faction that they 
could not survive, and even profit from, a revulsion of fortune. 3 
But the principal supporters of the Claudian party were probably 
the remnant of the Pompeians. 

In evil days Roman aristocratic loyalty acknowledged the ties 
of family, of jides, of amicitia. Tiberius had few kinsmen. Yet 
the excellent L. Volusius Saturninus will not have forgotten alto¬ 
gether that his father had married a relative of Tiberius. 4 Many 
men of merit had shared with Tiberius’ parents the flight from 
Italy, the sojourn with Sex. Pompeius and memories of trials in 
adversity for the Republic. 5 Cn. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 23 B.c.) 
had been a Republican but rallied to Augustus; his son, a man of 
marked and truly Republican independence of temper, enjoyed 
the trust and the esteem of Tiberius. 6 C. Sentius Saturninus was 
related to the family of L. Scribonius Libo, the father-in-law of 


1 The family of Piso, like that of Messalla, is a nexus ot difficult problems. 
Presumably he was twice married. M. Licinius Crassus Frugi (cos. A.D. 27) was 
one of his sons, adopted, it appears, by the mysterious M. Licinius Crassus, cos. 
14 B.c., as is inferred from 1 G II 2 , 4163. On this problem, cf. E. Groag in PIR 2 , 
C 289; for a stemma of the Pisones, ib., facing p. 54. See also'Fable V at end. 

2 His daughter (PIR 2 , C 323) married L. Nonius Asprenas, cos. stiff, a.d. 6, of a 
family of the new nobility which can show highly eminent connexions at this time : 
the first wife of P. Quinctilius Varus was the aunt of this Asprenas, cf. the stemma, 
'Fable VII at end. Further, one of the Volusii married a Nonia Polla ( OGIS 468). 

3 Varus was related to the Nonii (see the previous note); and his sister was 
the mother of P. Cornelius Dolabeila (cos. a.d. 10), cf. PIR 2 , C 1348 and the stemma 
shown on Tabic VII at end. 

4 Q. Volusius was the son-in-law of a Tiberius (Cicero, Ad Att. 5, 21, 6), i.e., 
probably of Tiberius’ father or grandfather. This Q. Volusius may be the father 
of L. Volusius Saturninus (cos. stiff. 12 B.c.); that consul’s wife was Nonia Polla 
(OGIS 468). 

5 Objects bestowed on the infant Tiberius by the sister of Sex. Pompeius were 
preserved as heirlooms or curiosities (Suetonius, Tib. 6, 3). 

6 Cn. Piso, consul with Tiberius in 7 B.c. Tacitus describes him as ‘ingenio 
violentum et obsequii ignarum, insita ferocia a patre Pisone’ (Ann. 2, 43). 



THE SUCCESSION 425 

Sex. Pompeius ;* and there were now descendants of Pompeius 
and Scribonia, who intermarried with certain Livii, kinsfolk of 
Tiberius on his mother’s side. 1 2 The family of L. Arruntius (cos. 
22 b.c.), also an associate of Sex. Pompeius, formed a Pompeian 
connexion. 3 Cn. Cinna, again, was a grandson of Magnus. 

By now the marshals of the revolutionary wars, Carrinas, 
Calvisius, Cornificius and others had disappeared. Taurus was 
dead, and his son did not live to reach the consulate, but the 
family was intact and influential. 4 Of the more recent novi 
homines , L. Tarius Rufus, though a personal friend of Augustus, 
probably commanded as little authority as he deserved; Lollius 
was a bitter enemy, Vinicius and Silius apparently neutral or 
discreet, while Quirinius trimmed artfully. 5 It is evident that the 
political crisis in Rome and defeat of the Claudian faction would 
create repercussions to be detected on the consular Fasti and in 
the apportioning of the military provinces. The supersession of 
Sentius in Syria by Varus in 6 b.c. may, or may not, have had 
political causes. No doubt, however, about the significance of 
Ahenobarbus and Vinicius with the northern armies, of Lollius 
in the East and of Fabius Maximus in Spain. 6 

The enemies of Tiberius, the careerists honest or dishonest, 
and the loyal servants of whatever happened to be the govern¬ 
ment of Rome now had their turn for nine years. Li via waited 
and worked for her family, patient and unobtrusive. There must 
be no open evidence of discord in the syndicate of government. 
In the end, everything played into her hands. In 2 b.c. an oppor¬ 
tune scandal burst into publicity and ruined Julia, the daughter 
of the Princeps. Yet it was not of Livia’s doing, and it brought no 
immediate benefit to her son. The whole episode is mysterious. 

1 ILS 8892. 

2 Note M. Livius Drusus Libo (cos. 15 b.c.), whose connexions are unknown. 
The other relationships are tortuous and difficult to explain, cf. P-W 11 a, 885 ft.; 
for the stemma, see Table V at end. L. Scribonius Libo and M. Scribonius Libo 
Drusus, consul and praetor in a.d. 16, were grandsons of Sex. Pompeius. 

3 Precisely how, it is not quite clear: the adopted son of L. Arruntius (ros. a.d. 6) 
is called L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus; and his son in turn is described as 
the ‘a[bnepos]’ or ‘a[dnepos]’ of Pompeius Magnus (ILS 976, cf. PIR a , A 1147). 
But L. Arruntius himself (cos. a.d. 6) may have Pompeian blood or connexions 
through the Cornelii Sullae, cf. Tacitus, Arm. 3, 31 ; E. Groag, PIR Z , A 1130. 

4 T. Statilius Taurus, cos. a.d. i i, married a daughter of Messalla Corvinus. See 
further above, p. 423, n. 1. 

5 Through his first wife Appia Claudia (CIL vi, 15626), sister of Messalla 
Appianus, Quirinius was connected with Claudii and Valerii. He was also kin to 
the Libones (Tacitus, Ann. 2, 30): precisely how, no evidence. 

6 Above, p. 400 f. 



426 THE SUCCESSION 

Julia was accused of immoral conduct by Augustus and sum¬ 
marily banished to an island. He provided the Senate with a 
document and full particulars of her misbehaviour, her para¬ 
mours and her accomplices: they w r ere said to be numerous, of 
every order of society. Five nobles were among them. 1 The 
consular Iullus Antonius was put to death; 2 the others, the con¬ 
sular T. Quinctius Crispinus, described as austere in appearance, 
unspeakably wicked within, 3 the subtle and eloquent Ti. Sem- 
pronius Gracchus, 4 an Ap. Claudius Pulcher, who may have been 
the son or grandson of the consul of 38 b.c., and a Cornelius 
Scipio were all relegated. 5 The offence may have been trans¬ 
gression against the Leges Juliae : the punishment went beyond 
that, and the procedure was probably a trial for high treason. 6 

Circumstantial reports of the revels of Julia, of the number and 
variety of her lovers, were propagated by rumour, embellished 
with rhetoric and consecrated in history—she disgraced by public 
and nocturnal debauch the Forum and the very Rostra from 
which the Princeps her father had promulgated the laws that 
were to sanction the moral regeneration of Rome. 7 It may be 
tempting, but it is not necessary, to rehabilitate her entirely. 
Julia may have been immodest, but she was hardly a monster. 
Granted a sufficient and damning measure of truth in one or two 
charges of adultery—Julia was a Roman aristocrat and claimed 
the prerogatives of her station and family 8 —was it necessary that 
there should be public scandal? Augustus was bitter and merci¬ 
less because his moral legislation had been baffled and mocked 
in his own family. Yet he could have dealt with the matter there. 
His programme was unpopular enough with the aristocracy, and 

1 Velleius alone (2, 100, 4 f.) gives the list. Me says that there were others, both 
senators and knights. 

2 Dio 55, 10, 15; Tacitus, Ann . 1, 10; 4, 44. Velleius (2, 100, 4) says that he 
took his own life. The difference is not material. 

3 Velleius 2, ro2, 5: ‘singularem nequitiam supercilio truci obtegens.’ 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 53 : 'soliers ingenio et prave facundus.’ On his literary accom¬ 
plishments, P-W 11 a, 1372. 

5 For the identity of these persons, cf. E. Groag, Wiener Studien XI.I (1919), 86. 
Presumably the last of the Scipiones and the last of the Claudii Pulchri. 

6 Cf. Tacitus, Ann. 3, 24. 

7 Seneca, De ben. 6, 32, 1: ‘admissos gregatim adulteros, pererratam nocturnis 
comissationibus civitatem, forum ipsum ac rostra, ex quibus pater legem de adul- 
teriis tulerat, filiae in stupra placuisse, cotidianum ad Marsyam concursum, cum 
ex adultera in quaestuariam versa ius omnis licentiae sub ignoto adultero peteret.’ 
This purports to derive from Augustus’ accusations against his daughter. The 
same source can be detected in Pliny, NH 21,9; Dio 55, 10, 12. 

8 Velleius 2, 100, 3: ‘magnitudinemque fortunae suae peccandi licentia metieba- 
tur, quicquid liberet pro licito vindicans.’ 



THE SUCCESSION 427 

the most circumspect of politicians could hardly afford in this 
critical season the luxury of a moral purge of high society. What 
induced him to court public scandal and sanction the disgrace on 
his daughter? 

The influence and hand of Livia might have been suspected, 
bearing heavily on the Julii who supplanted her son. But no 
ancient testimony makes this easy guess and incriminates the 
vulnerable schemer. Moreover the ruin of the erring mother did 
not impair the succession of Gaius and Lucius, her sons. 

The motive must have been political, the charges of vice a 
convenient and impressive pretext. 1 As a politician, Augustus 
was ruthless and consequent. To achieve his ambition he would 
coolly have sacrificed his nearest and dearest; and his ambition 
was the unhindered succession to the throne of Gaius and Lucius. 
To this end their mother served merely as an instrument. There 
may have been a conspiracy. Whether wanton or merely tra¬ 
duced, Julia was not a nonentity but a great political lady. Her 
paramours the five nobiles are not innocent triflers or moral repro¬ 
bates but a formidable faction. Gracchus bears most of the 
official blame: 2 the true principal was probably Iullus Antonius. 
The son of the Triumvir might well be politically dangerous. 
Like the early Christian, it was not the ‘flagitia’ but the ‘nomen’ 
that doomed him. Iullus Antonius may have aspired to the place 
of Tiberius as stepfather of the princes; and Julia may well have 
found the accomplished Antonius more amiable than her grim 
husband. But all is uncertain—if Augustus struck down Julia 
and Antonius, it was not from tenderness for Tiberius. It may 
be that through the ruin of his daughter he sought finally to make 
Tiberius harmless, his own sons secure. Though absent, Tiberius 
still had a following; though an exile he still held his tribunicia 
potestas; and he was still the Princeps’ son-in-law. Augustus 
might think that he knew his Tiberius. Still, he preferred to run 
no risks. The disgrace of Julia would abolish the only tie that 
bound Tiberius to the reigning house. Tiberius was not con¬ 
sulted; when he knew, he vainly interceded for his wife. Augus¬ 
tus was unrelenting. He at once dispatched a missive to Julia, 
breaking off the marriage in the name of Tiberius. 3 

The position of Tiberius had long been anomalous. It now 

1 For this view, cf. esp. E. Groag, Wiener Studien xli (1919), 79 ff. 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 53, describes him as ‘pervicax adulter’, alleging a liaison that 
went back to the time when Julia was the wife of Agrippa. On the greater impor¬ 
tance of Iullus Antonius, cf. E. Groag, Wiener Studien xli (1919), 84 ff. 

■’ Suetonius, Tib. 11,4. 



428 THE SUCCESSION 

became doubtful and perilous. In the next year his tribunicia 
potestas lapsed. Augustus did not renew it. Gaius Caesar, consul 
designate and invested with proconsular imperium , after visiting 
the Danubian and Balkan armies, now appeared in the East. For 
some years disturbances in Armenia, a land over which Augustus 
claimed sovranty, while not seriously impairing the interests or 
the prestige of Rome, none the less called for attention. More¬ 
over it was advisable to display the heir apparent to provinces and 
armies which had seen no member of the syndicate of government 
since Agrippa the vicegerent departed from the East twelve 
vears before. In the meantime, able men had governed Syria—the 
veteran Titius, not heard of since Actium, but probably appointed 
legate of Syria when Agrippa left the East (13 B.c.), C. Sentius 
Saturninus and P. Quinctilius Varus. But that was not enough. 
Gaius was sent out, accompanied by M. Lollius as his guide and 
counsellor 1 it would never do if an ambitious and inexperienced 
youth embroiled the Empire in the futility of a Parthian War. 
On his staff there was a varied company that included L. Aelius 
Seianus and the military tribune Velleius Paterculus. 2 

Tiberius came to Samos with due submission to pay his re¬ 
spects to the kinsman who had supplanted him; he returned 
again to his retreat after a cool reception. Lollius was all-power¬ 
ful. Tiberius’ life was in danger—at a banquet in the presence 
of Gaius Caesar and Lollius, a hasty careerist offered to go to 
Rhodes and bring back the head of the exile. 3 That was excessive. 
There were other symptoms. Nemausus, a loyal and patriotic 
city of Narbonensis, cast down the statues of Tiberius; 4 and a 
despicable eastern king, Arehelaus of Cappadocia, whose cause 
Tiberius had once defended before the Senate, was emboldened 
to studious neglect of the head of the Claudian house. 5 Tiberius, 
who honoured, if ever a Republican noble did, the sacred claims 
of fides y remembered the affront. 

In the meantime Gaius prosecuted his travels. In a.d. 2 the 
Roman prince conferred with the King of Parthia on an island in 
the river Euphrates, with highly satisfactory results. Shortly 
after this, Lollius the 'comes et rector’ fell abruptly from favour 
and died, of his own hand, so it was reported. Everybody 

1 Suetonius, Tib . 12 f.; Velleius 2, lor f.; Dio 55, ro, 17 ff. (with no word of 
Lollius). For events in the Fast, cf. J. G. C. Anderson in CAII x, 273 ff. 

2 Velleius 2, 101, 3; Tacitus, Ann. 4, 1 (Seianus). 

3 Suetonius, Tib , 13, 1. 

4 Ih. His father had been active in Narbonensis for Caesar (ib. 4, 1). 

5 Tacitus, Ann. 2, 42, cf. Suetonius, Tib. 8. 



THE SUCCESSION 429 

rejoiced at his death, says Velleius, a contemporary witness and 
a flatterer of Tiberius. 1 If many knew the truth of the whole 
episode, they were not likely to tell* it. It is evident, and it is 
demonstrated by another incident nearly twenty years later, that 
the task of controlling a crown prince in the East was peculiarly 
open to friction, dissension and political intrigue. 2 

Against Lollius it was alleged that he had taken bribes from 
eastern kings 3 —in itself no grave misdemeanour. The charges of 
rapacity and avarice elsewhere levelled against this powerful and 
unpopular ally of the Princeps may perhaps be held confirmed 
rather than refuted by Horace’s eager praise of his disinterested 
integrity. 4 The apparent conflict of testimony about the character 
of Lollius bears its own easy interpretation. Lollius was favoured 
by Augustus, loathed by Tiberius. In 17 B.e., when governor of 
Gaul, Lollius had suffered at the hands of raiding Germans a 
trifling defeat, soon repaired but magnified beyond all measure 
by his detractors. 5 In the following year Augustus came to 
Gaul, Tiberius with him. Tiberius inherited Lollius’ command 
of the legions of Gaul and the glory of the Alpine War. Like 
P. Silius for the favourite Drusus on the other flank of the 
convergent advance, Lollius may have laboured for another to 
reap. Lollius was supplanted. Hence a feud, mutual and un¬ 
remitting. 

To the disgraced Lollius in the delicate function of guiding 
C. Caesar succeeded P. Sulpicius Quirinius, who had paid as¬ 
siduous court to the exile of Rhodes without impairing his own 
advancement. 6 His diplomatic foresight was handsomely re¬ 
quited, before death by the governorship of Syria and after 
death. The novus homo from the small town of Lanuvium was 
accorded a public funeral on the instance of Tiberius, who took 
occasion to remind the Senate of Quirinius 1 merits, with pointed 
contrast and vituperation of Lollius, dead twenty years before, 

1 Velleius 2, 102, 1 f. 

; As Cn. Piso {cos. 7 found to his cost when trying to control Gcrmanicus. 

’ Pliny, TV// 9, 1 18. Velleius speaks of sinister designs of Lollius which the King 
of Parthia disclosed—‘perfida et plena suhdoli ac versuti anirm consiha.’ 

4 Odes 4, q, 37 f.: ‘vindex avarae fraudis ct abstinens | ducentis ad sc cuncta 
pecuniae.' Compare Velleius (2, 97, 1): ‘sub legato Al. Lollio, homine in omnia 
pecuniae quam recte faciendi cupidiore et inter summam vitiorum dissimulationem 
vitiosissimo.* 

5 Velleius 2, 97, 1. The truth of the matter is revealed by Dio 54, 20, 4 fT. Too 
much has been made of the ‘clades Lollianak 

6 Tacitus, Ami . 3, 48: ‘Tiberium quoque Rhodi agentem coluerat.’ Shortly 
after this, probably in a.d. 3, he got Aemilia Lepida for his wife. Groag suspects 
that Livia had something to do with the match (P-W iv A, 837). 



430 THE SUCCESSION 

but not forgotten. Lollius, he said, was responsible for the evil 
behaviour of C. Caesar. 1 * 

The position of Tiberius improved, though his political pro¬ 
spects grew no brighter. His spirit appears to have been broken. 
He had already begged to be allowed to return, and his plea had 
been reinforced by the repeated intercession of his mother. Until 
the fall of Lollius, Augustus remained obdurate. He now gave 
way—what Livia had been unable to achieve was perhaps the 
work of political influences and powerful advisers that evade 
detection. But even now, return was conditional on the consent 
of Gaius; and Tiberius was debarred from public life. He dwelt 
in Rome as a private citizen. Even though the other Caesar, 
Lucius, when on his way to Spain succumbed to illness and died 
at Massilia a few days after Tiberius* return, the Claudian was 
not restored to his dignitas . 1 No honour, no command in war 
awaited him, but a dreary and precarious old age, or rather a brief 
term of despair until Gaius succeeded to the throne and the 
public safety imposed the ruthless suppression of a rival. 

Once again fortune took charge of the game and shattered 
Augustus’ ambition of securing the succession for one of his own 
blood. He had surmounted scandal and conspiracy, merciless to¬ 
wards Julia and the five nobiles her allies; and in a.d. i, when his 
son and heir was consul, he came safely through the climacteric 
year of a man’s life, the sixty-third. 3 Not three years passed and 
Gaius was dead. After composing the relations of Rome and 
Parthia, in the course of the same year Gaius proceeded to settle 
order in the dependent kingdom of Armenia. While laying siege 
to a small post, he was treacherously attacked and wounded. The 
wound refused to heal. His malady brought on a deep dejection, 
reinforcing perhaps a consciousness of personal inadequacy; the 
young man conceived a violent distaste for the life of active 
responsibility to which he was doomed by his implacable master: 4 
it is alleged that he asked for permission to dwell in the East in 
a private station. However it be (and scandal has probably em¬ 
bellished the topic in the interests of Tiberius), Gaius wasted 
away and perished far from Rome (February 21st, a.d. 4). 5 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 48: ‘incusato M. Lollio, quem auctorem Gain Caesari pravi- 
tatis et discordiarum arguebat.’ 

z Lucius died on August 20th, a.d. 2 (ILS 139). 

3 Above, p. 418, n.2. Cf. E. Hohl, Klioxxx (1937), 337 ff., who argues that the 
conspiracy of L. Aemilius Paullus, husband of the younger Julia, belongs to this year. 

4 Velleius 2, 102, 3 f.: ‘animum minus utilem rei publicae habere coepit. nec 

defuit conversatio hominum vitia eius assentatione alentium.’ 5 ILS 140. 



THE SUCCESSION 431 

There was no choice now. Augustus adopted Tiberius. The 
words in which he announced his intention revealed the bitter 
frustration of his dearest hopes. 1 They were not lost upon 
Tiberius—or upon the principes , his rivals. In this emergency 
Augustus remained true to himself. Tiberius had a son; but 
Tiberius, though designated to replace Augustus, was to be 
cheated, prevented from transmitting the power to the Claudii 
only. I le w r as constrained to adopt a youth who perpetuated the 
descent of the municipal Octavii, Germanicus his brother’s son, 
grandson of Octavia. Further, the Princeps adopted Agrippa 
Postumus, the last surviving son of Agrippa and Julia. 

Of the true sentiments of Senate and People when the Claudian 
returned to power, no testimony exists. 2 In his own order and 
class, it will be presumed, no lack of open joy and welcome, to 
dissemble the ruin ol high ambitions. It was expedient to demon¬ 
strate without delay that he was indispensable to the safety of the 
Empire—in short, the ‘p er P e ^ uus patronus Romani imperii’. 3 
Tiberius Caesar, now in possession of tribunicia potestas and a 
special imperium , w r as dispatched to the North. There had been 
fighting in Germany—with more credit to Rome, perhaps, and 
more solid achievement than is indicated by a historian who 
omits Ahenobarbus and is as cool about the services of Vinicius 
as his personal attachment to the family of that general could 
with decency permit. 4 The soldiers at least were quite glad to 
see Tiberius, a cautious and considerate general. 5 After two 
campaigns he passed to IHyricum. In the interval of his absence, 
the power of Rome had been felt beyond the Danube. The 
peoples from Bohemia eastwards to Transylvania were compelled 
to acknowledge Roman suzerainty; Maroboduus, the ruler of a 
Bohemian kingdom, was isolated on all sides. 6 The final blow 
was to fall in a.d. 6 , w hen the armies of the Rhine and of lllyricum 
invaded Bohemia from w r est and south, in a grand converging 
movement. The rebellion of lllyricum cut short the ambitious 

1 Quoted by Suetonius (Tib. 23): ‘quoniam atrox fortuna Gaium et Lucitim filios 
mihi eripuit’, &c. 

1 Rut Velleius (2, 103, 4) deserves to be quoted: ‘turn refulsit certa spes libero- 

rum parentibus, viris matrimoniorum, dominis patnmoni, omnibus hominibus 
salutis, quietis, pads, tranquillitatis, adeo ut nec plus sperari potuerit, nec spei 
responded felicius.' These pious prayers were answered almost at once by famine, 
pestilence and years of warfare, with grave disasters. 3 lb. 2, 121, 1. 

4 lb. 2, 104, 2: ‘in Germaniam misit, ubi ante triennium sub M. Vinicio, avo 
tuo, clarissimo viro, immensum exarserat bellum et erat ab eo quibusdam in locis 
gestum, quibusdam sustentatum feliciter.’ 

5 lb. 2, 104, 5. 6 Cf. CAM x, 364 ff., and above, p. 400. 



432 THE SUCCESSION 

design, fully engaging the attention of Tiberius for three years 
(a.d. 6-9). Then Germany rose. Varus and three legions perished. 
Rome did not see her new master for many years. 

The adoption of Tiberius should have brought stability to the 
regime by discouraging the hopes of rivals or relatives. One 
danger, ever menacing, was still averted by the continuous 
miracle of Augustus’ longevity. If his death occurred in the 
midst of the frontier troubles, in which, close upon the gravest 
foreign war since Hannibal (for so the rebellion of Illyricum was 
designated) 1 there followed a disaster unparalleled since Crassus, 
the constitutional crisis in Rome, supervening when the first man 
in the Empire was absent, might turn into a political catastrophe. 
Against that risk the Princeps and the chief men of the govern¬ 
ment must have made careful provision. The way was still rough 
and perilous. 

Two obstacles remained, Julia and Agrippa Postumus, the only 
surviving grandchildren of the Princeps—and they did not 
survive for long. In a.d. 8 a new scandal swept and cleansed 
the household of the Princeps, to the grief of Augustus, the 
scorn or delight of his enemies—and perhaps to the ultimate advan¬ 
tage of the Roman People. Julia, it was alleged, had slipped into 
the wayward habits of her gay and careless mother. She was 
therefore relegated to a barren island/ Her paramour was D. 
Junius Silanus 3 —there may have been others, for the charge of 
immorality was a convenient device for removing, as well as for 
discrediting, a political suspect. This Silanus was a relative of 
M. Junius Silanus (cos. a.d. 19) to whom Julia’s daughter Aemilia 
Lepida was perhaps already betrothed. L. Aemilius Paullus could 
hardly be accused of adultery with Julia, for she was his wife. 
Connivance in her misconduct may have been invoked to palliate 
his execution for conspiracy. 4 

The charges brought against Agrippa Postumus had been more 
vague, his treatment more merciful but none the less arbitrary 
and effective. Agrippa is described as brutal and vicious. 5 The 

1 Suetonius, Tib. 16, i ; cf. Tiberius’ remarks (Tacitus, Amt. 2, 63), 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 71, cf. 3, 24. 3 lb. 3, 24. 

4 The whole affair is highly obscure. The conspiracy and death of Paullus 
(Suetonius, Divus Aug. 19, 1) is undated. The scholiast on Juvenal 6, 158, states 
that Julia was relegated after her husband had been put to death, then recalled, 
but finally exiled when she proved incorrigible in her vices. If this could be taken 
as quite reliable, the conspiracy of Paullus occurred before A.D, 8, perhaps in A.D. 1, 
as Hohl argues (Klio xxx, 337 ff.). 

5 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 3: ‘rudem sane bonarum artium et robore corporis stolide 
ferocem.’ 



THE SUCCESSION 433 

strength of body and intractable temper which he had inherited 
from his father might have been schooled in the discipline of the 
camp or the playing-field: it was out of place at Court. His 
coeval, Germanicus’ young brother Claudius, whom some thought 
stupid and whom his mother Antonia called a monster, was not a 
decorative figure. But Claudius was harmless and tolerated. Not 
so Agrippa, of the blood of Augustus. This political encumbrance 
was dispatched to a suitable island (a.d. 7). 

Augustus still lived through the scandals of his family. The 
disasters of his armies tried him more sorely and wrung from 
his inhuman composure the despairing complaint against Varus 
for the lost legions. 1 In a.d. 13 the succession was publicly regu¬ 
lated as far as was possible. Tiberius became co-regent, in virtue 
of a law conferring on him powers equal with the Princeps in the 
control of provinces and armies. 2 After conducting a census as 
the colleague of Augustus, Tiberius Caesar set out for Illyricum 
(August, a.d. 14). 

The health of Augustus grew worse and the end was near, 
heralded and accompanied by varied exaggerations of rumour. 
Men even believed that the frail septuagenarian, accompanied 
only by his intimate, Paullus Fabius Maximus, had made a voyage 
by sea to visit Agrippa Postumus in secret. 3 More instructive, 
perhaps, if no more authentic, was the report of one of his latest 
conversations, at which the claims and the dispositions of certain 
principes were severally canvassed. M. Aemilius Lepidus, he 
said, possessed the capacity for empire but not the ambition, 
Asinius Callus the ambition only: L. Arruntius had both. 4 These 
were eminent men. Lepidus, of Scipionic ancestry, son of 
Augustus’ friend Paullus, held aloof from the politics of the 
Aemilii and the alliance of his ill-starred brother, the husband of 
the younger Julia. He served with distinction under Tiberius in 
Illyricum, and in this year was governor of Hispania Citerior, 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 23, 2: ‘Quintili Varc, legibnes redde!’ 

* Velleius 2, 121, 3; Suetonius, Tib . 21, 1. 

1 'Tacitus, Ann. 1, 5. Quite incredible, cf. E. Groag, P-W vi, 1784 f. 

1 'Tacitus, Ann. 1, 13, according to whom some authorities substituted Cn. Piso 
P fW \ 7 ».e.) for Arruntius. That is not the only uncertainty here. The MS. of 
Tacitus has ‘M. Lepidum’. Lipsius altered to 'M\ Lepidum', which most editors, 
scholars and historians have followed, supposing M\ Aemilius Lepidus, cos. a.d. i i 
(P/ 7 ? 2 , A 363) to be meant. Wrongly—M. Aemilius Lepidus, cos. a.d. 6 ( FIR 2 , 
A 3 h<>), the son of Paullus and Cornelia, is a more prominent character. His 
daughter was betrothed to Drusus, son of Germanicus (Tacitus, Ann. 6, 40). 
Velleius described M. Lepidus (2, 114, 5) as being ‘nomini ac fortunae Caesarum 
proximus’. 



434 THE SUCCESSION 

at the head of three legions. 1 Tiberius could trust Lepidus—not 
Gallus, however, the husband of Vipsania. Gallus, with all his 
father's fierce independence of spirit, was devoured by a fatal 
impatience to play the politician. He was not given the command 
of an army. L. Arruntius came of a wealthy and talented family, 
newly ennobled through his father, admiral at Actium, consul in 
22 B.c., and the author of a history of the Punic Wars in the 
manner of Sallustius. 2 

The time for such exciting speculations had passed ten years 
before. The government party among the aristocracy old and 
new, built up with such care by Augustus to support the mon¬ 
archy and the succession of his sons, had been transformed both 
in composition and in allegiance. Some of the enemies or rivals 
of Tiberius, such as Lollius and Julius Antonius, were dead, 
others discredited, others displaced. Astute politicians who had 
not committed themselves too deeply were quick to transfer their 
adherence openly to the prospective Princeps; and neutrals 
reaped the fruits of prudent abstention from intrigue. Quirinius 
had prospered; 3 likewise P. Quinctilius Varus, a person of con¬ 
sequence at Rome—he had married Claudia Pulchra, the daugh¬ 
ter of Marcella. Varus had other useful connexions. 4 

A new party becomes discernible, dual in composition, as 
might be expected. In the six years following the return to power 
of Tiberius, along with descendants of the old nobility, like the 
patricians M. Aemilius Lepidus, P. Cornelius Dolabella and M. 
Furius Camillus, or heirs of recent consuls like the two Nonii 
L. Arruntius and A. Licinius Ncrva Silianus (son of P\ Silius), 
names entirely new appear on the Fasti —the palpable influence 
of the aristocratic Claudian. 5 Such are the two Vibii from the 
small town of Larinum in Samnium; Papius Mutilus, also a 
Samnite; the two Poppaei from the Picene country; also L. 
Apronius and Q. Junius Blaesus. No less significant is the name 
or I^ucilius Longus, honourably commemorated in history 

1 Velleius 2, 114, 5 (Illyricum); 125, 5 (hjpain). 

2 L. Arruntius, cos. 22 b.c. ( PIR 2 , A 1129); his son, cos. a.d. 6 (ib., 1130). For 
their Pompeian connexions, which help to explain their prominence, cf. above, 
P- 425 - 

3 See above, p. 429. He was now married to an Aemilia Lepida. 

4 Above, p. 424. L. Nonius Asprenas (cos. stiff, a.d. 6), Sex. Nonius Quinctilianus 
{cos. a.d. 8) and P. Cornelius Dolabella were his nephews. Through the Nonii he 
was allied with L. Calpumius Piso and L. Volusius Satuminus. 

5 For details of origin about these novi homines , see above, p. 362 f. For the con¬ 
trary interpretation of this evidence (and consequently of the character and policy 
of Tiberius), cf. F. B. Marsh, The Reign of Tiberius (1931), 43 f., cf. 67. 



THE SUCCESSION 435 

for his loyalty to Tiberius—perhaps the son of that Lucilius who 
was the friend of Brutus and of Antonius. 1 Tiberius did not 
forget his own Republican and Pompeian antecedents. 

Like the departure, the return of Tiberius will have changed 
the army commands. Most of the generals of the earlier wars of 
conquest were now dead, decrepit or retired, giving place to 
another generation, but not their own sons—the young men in¬ 
herited nobility, that was enough. Caution, abetted by the me¬ 
mory of old feuds or suppressed rancour, persuaded Tiberius to 
defraud them of military glory. The deplorable Lollius had a son, 
it is true, but his only claim to fame or history is the parentage 
of Lollia Paullina. P. Vinicius and P. Silius, the sons of marshals, 
began a military career, commanding the army of the Balkans 
after their praetorships ; 2 they received the consulate but no 
consular military province. Silius’ two brothers attained to the 
consulate, only one of them, however, to military command. 3 This 
being so, few indeed of the nobiles , the rivals and equals of Tiber¬ 
ius, could hope that their sons would govern provinces w r ith 
legionary armies ---certainly not Ahenobarbus or Paullus Fabius 
Maximus. 

Of the earlier generation of Augustus’ marshals, C. Sentius 
Saturninus alone persisted, commanding on the Rhine: 4 he was 
followed by Varus, with L. Nonius Asprenas as his legate. 5 In 
the East, L. Volusius Saturninus, a family friend of Tiberius, is 
attested as governor of Syria (a.d. 4-5); after him came Quirinius 
(a.d. 6). 6 M. Plautius Silvanus governs Asia and then Galatia 
(a.d. 4~6); 7 Cn. Piso’s command in Spain probably belongs to 
this period ; 8 and two Cornelii Lentuli turn up in succession as 
proconsuls of the turbulent province of African 

When Tiberius invaded Bohemia in a.d. 6, the veteran Sentius 
Saturninus led the army of Germany eastwards as one column of 
the convergent attack, while under Tiberius served M. Valerius 

1 Lucilius Longus the friend of Tiberius, Tacitus, Ann. 4, 15 : Lucilius the 
friend of Brutus, Plutarch, Brutus 50; Antonius 69. 2 Velleius 2, 101, 3. 

3 C. Silius A. Caecina Largus (Tacitus, A?in. 1, 31). 

4 Velleius 2, 105, 1 (a.d. 4). How long he had been there is not recorded. Vel¬ 
leius says of Sentius ‘qui iam legatus patris eius in Germania fuerat’. Perhaps from 
a.d. 3. Possibly on an earlier and separate occasion c. ( 3 b.c.? 

5 lb. ii7ff.; 120, 1 (Asprenas). 

b P 1 R \ V 660 (L. Volusius); Josephus AJf 18, 1 ff., See. (Quirinius). 

7 IGRR iv, 1362 (Asia); Dio 55, 28, 2 f., cf. SEC vi, 646 (Galatia). 

8 Tacitus, Ann . 3, 13, cf. P 1 R\ C 287. 

*' L. Cornelius Lentulus, cos . 3 b.c. ( Inst . lust. 2, 25 pr .), c . a.d. 4 5, cf. PIR 2 , 
E 1384; Cossus Cornelius Lentulus, cos. 1 b.c., proconsul in a.d. 6 (Dio 55, 28, 3 f. ; 
Velleius 2, 116, 2, Si c.). 



436 THE SUCCESSION 

Mcssalla Messallinus (cos. 3 b.c.) as governor of the province of 
lllyricuin, ‘vir animo etiam quam gentc nobiliorV In the Balkans 
the experienced soldier A. Caecina Severus (raw sujf. 1 B.c.) was 
in charge of Moesia (now that Macedonia had lost its army). - In 
the three years of the rebellion of Illyricum the following con- 
sulars served under Tiberius in various capacities, namely M. 
Plautius Silvanus (summoned from Galatia to the Balkans with 
an army in a.d. 7), M. Aemilius Lcpidus, whose virtues matched 
his illustrious lineage, C. Vibius Postumus (cos, suff. a.d. 5), 
L. Apronius (cos. suff. a.d. 8 ), and probably L. Aelius Lamia, ‘vir 
antiquissimi moris’ (cos. a.d. 3). 1 2 3 

The laudatory labels of Velleius tell their own story. The 
names of consuls and legates, a blend of the old and the new, 
provide some indication of the range and character of Tiberius’ 
party. Members of families that hitherto had not risen to the 
consulate are prominent—yet not paradoxical, for this was a 
Claudian faction. In the background, however, stand certain 
noble houses which, for all their social eminence, do not seem 
to have been implicated in the matrimonial arrangements of 
Augustus—the Calpurnii Pisones and the Cornelii Lentuli. 
L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 b.c.) was connected, it is true, with the 
family of Caesar; but the bond had not been tightened. Piso was 
an aristocrat of varied accomplishments, of literary tastes, yet the 
victor in a great Thracian war, a hard drinker, the boon com¬ 
panion and intimate counsellor of Tiberius. 4 He was destined to 
hold a long tenure of the post of praefectus urbi . 5 His successor, 
though only for a year, was L. Aelius Lamia, a lively old man 
who enjoyed high social distinction although the first consul in 
his family. 6 After Lamia came Cossus Cornelius Lentulus (cos. 
1 b.c.), the distinguished general of a war in Africa, a somnolent 
and lazy person to outward view, but no less trusted by Tiberius 
than the excellent Piso. 7 They never let out a secret. It will be 

1 Velleius 2, 112, 1 f.; Dio 55, 29, 1. 

2 Velleius 2, 112, 4; Dio 55, 29, 3; 30, 3 f.; 32, 3. 

3 Velleius 2, 112, 4, cf. Dio 55, 34, 6f.; 56, 12, 2 and JLS 921 (Silvanus); 
Velleius 2, 114, 5 (Lepidus); 2, r 16, 2 (Postumus and Apronius); 2, 116, 3 (Lamia). 

4 About whom Velleius is lavish of non-committal praise (2, 98, 1): ‘de quo viro 
hoc omnibus sentiendum ac praedicandum est, esse mores eius vigore ac lenitate 
mixtissimos.’ Seneca ( Epp. 83, 14) is more valuable: ‘L. Piso, urbis custos, ebrius 
ex quo scmel factus est, fuit.’ On his habits, cf. also Suetonius, Tib. 42, 1. 

5 Tacitus, Ann. 6, 10 (a.l>. 32). 

h Dio 58, 19, 5 (‘genus illi decorum, vivida sencctus’, Tacitus, Arm. 6, 27). 

7 Seneca, Epp. 83, 15 : ‘virum gravem, moderatum, sed mersum et vino maden- 
tem.’ 



THE SUCCESSION 437 

recalled that Seius Strabo had a wife from one branch of the 
patrician Cornelii Lentuli. 1 

A powerful coalition of individuals and of families stands be¬ 
hind Tiberius, mostly with interlocking matrimonial ties, houses 
of the ancient nobility like the Calpurnii and the numerous 
branches and relatives of the Cornelii Lentuli, men of more recent 
stocks such as L. Nonius Asprenas (linked through marriage 
with L. Calpurnius Piso, with Varus and with L. Volusius Satur- 
ninus), and a firm company of novi homines. A new government 
is already in being. 

Yet this was not enough to preclude rumours, and even risks. 
As the health of Augustus began to fail and the end was near, 
men’s minds were seized by fear and insecurity — ‘pauci bona 
libertatis in cassum disserere, plures bellum pavescere, alii cupere.’- 
So Tacitus, but he proceeds at once to demolish that impression. 
Velleius Paterculus, however, paints an alarming picture of the 
crisis provoked by the death of Augustus. The exaggeration is 
palpable and shameless. 3 

At Rome due provision had been made for the peaceful trans¬ 
mission of the Principate. Seius Strabo was Prefect of the Guard, 
C. Turranius of the corn supply; another knight, M. Magius, 
held Egypt. All the provincial armies were in the hands of sure 
partisans. On the Rhine were massed eight legions under two 
legates, the one C. Silius A. Caecina Largus, the son of one of 
Augustus’ faithful generals, the other A. Caecina Severus (perhaps 
a relative): Germanicus, nephew and adopted son of Tiberius, 
was in supreme command. 4 In Illyricum, now divided into two 
provinces, Pannonia was held by Q. Junius Blaesus, the uncle of 
Seianus, Dalmatia by P. Cornelius Dolabella, of ancient nobility. 3 
The competent and sturdy novns homo C. Poppaeus Sabinus was 
legate of Moesia. 6 In Syria stood CreticusMetellus Silanus, whose 
iniant daughter was betrothed to the eldest son of Germanicus. 7 

' fLS 8996. Cossus* son, Lentulus Gaetulicus (legate of Upper Germany, a.d. 
30 39), betrothed his daughter to Seianus' son (Tacitus, Ann. 6, 30). Tiberius did 
not remove him. That was not from fear of a civil war, as Tacitus reports, Hut 
because he could trust these Lentuli. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,4. 

1 Velleius 2, 124, 1 : ‘quid tunc homines limuerint, quae senatus trepidatio, quae 
populi confusio, quis orbis metus, in quam arto salutis exitique fuerimus eonfinio, 
neque mihi tarn festinanti exprimere vacat neque eui vacat potest.’ 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 1,31. 

5 lb. 1, 16 (Blaesus); Velleius 2, 125, 5 (Dolabella). 

0 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 80, cf. 6, 39. 

7 Coin evidence attests him there from A.n. 12-13 to 16-17 (for details, PJR 
C 64); for the betrothal of his daughter, 'Tacitus, Ann , 2, 43; JLS 184. 

4482 p 



438 THE SUCCESSION 

M. Aemilius Lepidus was in charge of Hispania Citerior. 1 These 
were the armed provinces of Caesar. Africa, with one legion, was 
governed by the proconsul L. Nonius Asprenas, who was suc¬ 
ceeded in that office by L. Aelius Lamia. 2 

On August 19th, a.d. 14, the Princeps died at Nola in Campania. 
Tiberius, who had set out for Illyricum, was recalled by urgent 
messages from his mother. He arrived in time to receive the last 
mandates from the lips of the dying Princeps—so ran the official 
and inevitable version, inevitably mocked and disbelieved. It did 
not matter. Everything had been arranged, not merely the de¬ 
signation of his successor. 

At Rome, magistrates and Senate, soldiers and populace at 
once took a personal oath in the name of Tiberius, renewing the 
allegiance sworn long ago to Octavianus before Actium. 3 This 
was the essence of the Principate. Certain formalities remained. 

On April 3rd of the previous year Augustus had drawn up 
his last will and testament. 4 About the same time, it may be 
inferred, three state-papers were composed or revised, namely, 
the ceremonial which he desired for his funeral, a list of the 
military and financial resources and obligations of the govern¬ 
ment and the Index rerum a se gestarum , which was to be set up 
on tablets of bronze in front of the Mausoleum. 

These were official documents. It is evident that Augustus 
had taken counsel with the chief men of his party, making his 
dispositions for the smooth transference of the supreme power. 
As in 27 B.c., it was necessary that the Principate should be con¬ 
ferred by consent upon the first citizen for services rendered and 
expected. The task might appear too great for any one man but 
Augustus alone, a syndicate might appear preferable to a princi¬ 
pate: 5 none the less, it must be demonstrated and admitted that 
there could be no division of the supreme power. 

The business of the deification of Augustus was admirably 


1 Velleius 2, 125, 5. His daughter too was betrothed to a son of Germanicus 
(Drusus), Tacitus, Ann. 6, 40. 

1 Asprenas (cos. suff. a.d. 6) is attested in a.d. 14/15 (Tacitus, Ann. r, 53). Lamia 
(ro$. a.d. 3) is presumably his successor. For the evidence for his proconsulate, 
PIR\ A 2QO. 

3 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 7: ‘Sex. Pompcius et Sex. Appuleius consules primi in verba 
Tiberii Caesaris iuravere, aputque eos Seius Strabo et C. Turranius, ille praetori- 
arum cohortium praefectus, hie annonae; rnox senatus milesque et populus.' 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 101, on which E. Hohl, Klio xxx (1937), 323 ff. 

5 Tacitus, Ann. i, 11: ‘proinde in civitate tot inlustribus viris subnixa non ad 
unum omnia deterrent: plures facilius munia rei publicae sociatis laboribus ex- 
secuturos/ 



THE SUCCESSION 439 

expedited: there were awkward moments in the public confer¬ 
ment of the Principate upon the heir whom he had designated. 
Tiberius himself was ill at ease, conscious of his ambiguous 
position and his many enemies, hesitant and over-scrupulous. 
The inevitable role of a freely chosen Princeps and the well- 
staged deception imposed by Augustus, the least honest and the 
least Republican of men, preyed upon the conscience of Tiberius 
and revealed itself in his public acts and utterances. On the other 
hand his enemies were alert to prosecute their advantage. Tiberius 
Caesar had the power—they v/ould not let him enjoy it in security 
and goodwill. In the critical session of the Senate certain of the 
leading men of the State, such as Asinius Gallus, played without 
skill the parts for which they had been chosen—perhaps in 
feigned and malignant clumsiness. 

So far the public spectacle and the inevitable ratification of 
Augustus’ disposal of the Roman State, Nothing was said in the 
Senate of the summary execution of Agrippa Postumus. It was 
ordered and done in secret, through Rallustius Crispus, a secre¬ 
tary of state, in virtue of the provision of the dead Princeps for 
this emergency, a deed coolly decided eighteen months before. 1 
Augustus was ruthless for the good of the Roman People. Some 
might affect to believe him unwilling to contemplate the execution 
of one of his own blood. 2 That interpretation was not meant to 
shield Augustus but to incriminate the new regime. ‘Primum 
facinus novi principatus’, so Tacitus describes the execution of 
Agrippa. The arbitrary removal of a rival was no less essential 
to the Principate than the public conferment of legal and con¬ 
stitutional power. Deed and phrase recur at the beginning of 
Nero’s reign. 3 From first to last the dynasty of the Julii and the 
Claudii ran true to form, despotic and murderous. 

' Tacitus, Ann. 1, 6, cf. the acute and convincing demonstration of E. Hohl, 
Hermes lxx (1935), 350 fT. 

2 lb. 1,6: ‘cctcrum in nullius unquam suorum necem duravit, neque mortem 
nepoti pro securitate privigni inlatam credibile erat.’ 

3 lb. 13, 1: ‘prima novo principatu mors lunii Silani proconsulis Asiae.’ 



XXIX. THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

S O far the manner in which power was seized and held, 
the working of patronage, the creation of an oligarchy and 
system of government. Security of possession, promotion for 
loyalty or merit and firm rule in Rome, Italy and the provinces, 
that was not enough. 

Peace came, and order; hut the State, still sorely ailing, looked 
to its ‘salubris princeps’ for spiritual regeneration as well as for 
material reform. Augustus claimed that a national mandate had 
summoned him to supreme power in the War of Actium. What¬ 
ever the truth of that contention, he could not go back upon it, 
even if he had wished. The mandate was not exhausted when 
the State was saved from a foreign enemy. The solid mass of his 
middle-class partisans was eager and insistent. 

‘Magis alii homines quam alii mores.’ 1 So Tacitus, not deluded 
by the outcome of a civil war that substituted one emperor for 
another and changed the personnel, but not the character, of 
government. The same men who had won the wars of the Revolu¬ 
tion now controlled the destinies of the New State —but different 
‘mores’ needed to be professed and inculcated, if not adopted. 
It is not enough to acquire power and wealth: men wish to 
appear virtuous and to feel virtuous. 

The new policy embodied a national and a Roman spirit. The 
contact with the alien civilization of Greece originally roused the 
Romans to become conscious of their own individual character 
as a people. While they took over and assimilated all that the 
Hellenes could give, they shaped their history, their traditions 
and their concept of what was Roman in deliberate opposition to 
what was Greek. Out of the War of Actium, artfully converted 
into a spontaneous and patriotic movement, arose a salutary myth 
which enhanced the sentiment of Roman nationalism to a for¬ 
midable and even grotesque intensity. 

Rome had won universal empire halt-reluctant, through a 
series of accidents, the ever-widening claims of military security 
and the ambition of a few men. Cicero and his contemporaries 
might boast of the libertas which the Roman People enjoyed, of 
the imperium which it exerted over others. Not until liber tas was 


1 Tacitus, Hist. 2, 95. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 441 

lost did men feel the full pride of Rome’s imperial destiny— 
empire without end in time and space: 

his ego nec metas remm nec tempora pono: 
imperium sine fine dedi. 1 

The Greeks might have their Alexander- it was glorious, but it 
was not Empire. Armies of robust Italian peasants had crushed 
and broken the great kings in the eastern lands, the successors of 
the Macedonian; and they had subdued to their rule nations more 
intractable than the conqueror of all the East had ever seen. In 
a surge of patriotic exaltation, the writers of Augustan Rome 
ingenuously debated whether Alexander himself, at the height 
and peak of his power, could have prevailed over the youthful 
vigour of the martial Republic. They were emboldened to doubt 
it.- More than that, the solid fabric of law and order, built by the 
untutored sagacity of Roman statesmen, would stand and endure 
for ever. The Romans could not compete with Greece for pri¬ 
macy in science, arts and letters— they cheerfully resigned the 
contest. The Roman arts were war and government: 

tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. ’ 

Hut the possession of an empire was something more than 
a cause for congratulation and a source of revenue. It was a 
danger and a responsibility. By its unwieldy mass the Empire 
might come crashing to the ground, involving Rome in the ruins. 
The apprehensions evoked by the long series of civil Avars were 
only too well grounded. Aetium had averted the menace—but 
for how long? Could Rome maintain empire without the virtues 
that had won it ? 4 

A well-ordered state has no need of great men, and no room 
for them. The last century of the Free State witnessed a succes¬ 
sion of striking individuals—a symptom of civic degeneration and 
a cause of disaster. It was the Greek period of Roman history, 
stamped with the sign of the demagogue, the tyrant and the class 
war; and many of the principal actors of the tragedy had little of 
the traditional Roman in their character. Augustus paid especial 
honour to the great generals of the Republic. To judge by the 
catalogues of worthies as retailed by patriotic poets, he had to go 
a long way back to find his favourites-—before the age of the 
Gracchi. Marius was an exemplar of Ttala virtus’; Sulla Felix 

1 Virgil, Aen. 1, 278 f. 2 Livy 9, i8f. 

3 Aen. 6, 851. 

4 This is the undertone of the whole preface to Livy’s History of Rome. 



442 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

was much more a traditional Roman aristocrat than many have 
believed; and Sulla sought to establish an ordered state. Both 
were damned by the crime of ambition and ‘impia arma\ Augus¬ 
tus, like the historian Tacitus, would have none of them; and so 
they receive no praise from the poets. 1 Pompeius was no better, 
though he has the advantage over Caesar in Virgil’s solemn ex¬ 
hortation against civil war. As for Antonius, he was the arche¬ 
type of foreign vices---‘externi mores ac vitia non Romana\ 2 

It was not merely the vices of the principes that barred them 
from recognition. Their virtues had been pernicious. Pompeius’ 
pursuit of gloria , Caesar’s jealous cult of his dignitas and his 
magnitude animi , the candour and the chivalry of Antonius—all 
these qualities had to be eradicated from the principes of the New 
State. If anything of them remained in the Commonwealth, it 
was to be monopolized by the one Princeps, along with dementia. 
The governing class was left with the satisfaction of the less 
decorative virtues: if it lacked them, it must learn them. 

The spirit of a people is best revealed in the words it employs 
with an emotional content. To a Roman, such a word was 
‘antiquus’; and what Rome now required was men like those of 
oldjand ancient virtue. As the poet had put it long ago, 

moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque. 3 

The Roman aristocrat requited privilege with duty to the State. 
Then individuals were poor, but the State was rich. His immoral 
and selfish descendants had all but ruined the Roman People. 
Conquest, wealth and alien ideas corrupted the ancient ideals of 
duty, piety, chastity and frugality. 4 How could they be restored? 

About the efficacy of moral and sumptuary legislation there 
might well be doubts, if men reflected on human nature and past 
history. Moreover, such regulation was repugnant to aristocratic 
breeding and sentiment. The Roman matron could claim that 
she needed no written law to guide her, no judge to correct: 

mi natura dedit leges a sanguine ductas 
ne possem melior iudicis esse metu. 5 

1 On Marius, Sulla and Pompeius, cf. Tacitus, Hist. 2, 38. Marius and Sulla do 
not occur in the list of Roman heroes in Aen. 6, 824 ff., or in Horace, Odes 1, 12. 
Marius does, however, just find a mention in Georgies 2, 169. 

2 Seneca, Epp. 83, 25. 

3 Ennius, quoted by Cicero in his De re publica (St. Augustine, De civ. Dei 2, 21). 

4 Livy, Praef. 12 : ‘nuper divitiae avaritiam et abundantes voluptates desiderium 
per luxum atque libidinem pereundi perdendique omnia invexere.’ 

5 Propertius 4, 11, 47 f. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 443 

The same proud insistence on the inherited virtue of class and 
family stands out in Horace’s laudation of the young Claudii: 

fortes creantur fortihus et bonis. 1 

But that was not enough, even in the Claudii: the poet proceeds, 

doctrina sed vim promovet insitam, 
rectique cultus pectora roborant. 

Much more necessary was precept and coercion among nobiles 
less fortunate in politics ana more exposed to temptation than 
the stepsons of the Princeps—the children of war and revolution, 
enamoured of ease after trouble, and the newly enriched who 
aped the extravagances of the aristocracy without their ancestral 
excuse or their saving qualities. 

Soon after Actium Augustus appears to have made a begin¬ 
ning. It was abortive: if promulgated, his law was at once with¬ 
drawn in the face of protest and opposition (28 B.c.). 2 But reform 
was in the air. The unpopular task called for a statesman of 
resolution—‘iustum et tenacem propositi virum\ 3 That way a 
mortal had ascended to heaven. Though bitterly reviled in his 
lifetime, Augustus would have his reward: 

si quaeret ‘Pater Urbium’ 
subscribi statuis, indomitam audeat 
refrenare licentiam, 
clarus postgenitis. 4 

Still Augustus delayed, abandoning his project of Secular Games 
in 22 B.c:., disappointed perhaps in the censors of that year. He 
departed to the eastern provinces. At once on his return in 
19 b.c., and again in the next year, he was offered the cura legion 
et tnorum , which he declined, professing it inconsistent with the 
‘mos maiorum’. That office savoured of regimentation, its title 
was all too revealing. More to the point, he did not need it. 
The Princeps enacted the measures of 18 B.c. in virtue of auctori- 
tas and by means of his tribunicia potestas. 5 

The principal laws designed to curb licence, establish morality 
and encourage the production of offspring, in a word, to restore 
the basis of civic virtue, were the Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus 
and the Lex Julia de adulteriis , both of this year; there were sub¬ 
sequent changes and additions, the most important being the Lex 

1 Odes 4, 4, 29. 2 Propertius 2, 7, cf. Livy, Praef . 9. 

3 Odes 3, 3, 1. 4 lb. 3, 24, 27ff 

5 Res Gestae 6; Dio 54, 16, 1 ff. 



444 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

Papia Poppaea of the year a.d. 9. 1 Regeneration was now vigor¬ 
ously at work upon the Roman People. The New Age could 
confidently be inaugurated. The Secular Games were therefore 
held in 17 B.c. Q. Iloratius Flaccus, who composed the hymn, 
extolled, along with peace and prosperity, the return of the old 
moralit) : 

iam Tides et Pax ct Honos Pudorqut* 
priscus et negleeta red ire Virtus 
audet . 2 

It had not been easy. Opposition arose in the Senate, and 
public demonstrations. A cuirass, concealed under the toga of 
the First Citizen, guarded him from assassination—for plots were 
discovered in this year, conspirators punished. 3 Legislation con¬ 
cerning the family, that was a novelty, but the spirit was not, for 
it harmonized both with the traditional activities of the censorial 
office and with the aspirations of conservative reformers. 1 Augus¬ 
tus claimed both to revive the past and to set standards for the 
future. In this matter there stood a valid precedent: Augustus 
inexorably read out to a recalcitrant Senate the whole of the speech 
which a Metellus had once delivered in the vain attempt to arrest 
a declining birth-rate. 5 

The aim of the new code was no less than this, to bring the 
family under the protection of the State- a measure quite super¬ 
fluous so long as Rome remained her ancient self. In the aristo¬ 
cracy of the last age of the Republic marriage had not always been 
blessed with either offspring or permanence. Matches contracted 
for the open and avowed ends of money, politics or pleasure were 
lightly dissolved according to the interest or the whim of either 
party. Few indeed of the great ladies would have been able—or 
eager—to claim, like Cornelia, the epitaph 

in lapidc hoc uni nupta fuisse legar. () 

Though some might show a certain restraint in changing 
husbands or lovers, they were seldom exemplars of the domestic 
virtues of the Roman matron—the Claudia who 

domum servavit, Ianam fecit. 7 

1 On this legislation and cognate problems, cf. esp. II. M. Last, CAH x, 441 ff. 

2 Carmen sacculare 57 fT. 

* Dio 54, 15, iff. 

4 Cicero desired that censors should forbid celibacy (De legibus 3,7): ‘caelibes esse 
prohibento, mores populi regunto, probrurn in senatu ne relinquonto.’ 

5 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 89, 2; Livy, Per. 59. 

(> Propertius 4, 11, 36. 


7 JLS 8403. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 445 

Their names were more often heard in public than was expedient 
for honest women: they became politicians and patrons of the 
arts. They were formidable and independent, retaining control of 
their own property in marriage. The emancipation of women had 
its reaction upon the men, who, instead of a partner from their 
own class, preferred alliance with a freedwoman, or none at all. 

With marriage and without it, the tone and habits of high 
society were gay and abandoned. The New State supervened, 
crushing and inexorable. The Lex Julia converted adultery, from 
a private offence with mild remedies and incomplete redress, into 
a crime. The wife, it is true, had no more rights than before. 
But the husband, after divorcing, could prosecute both the guilty 
partner and her paramour. The penalty was severe—relegation 
to the islands and deprivation of a large part of their fortune. 

The tightening of the matrimonial bond would hardly induce 
the aristocracy to marry and propagate. Material encouragement 
was required. Many old families had died out through lack of 
heirs, the existence of others was precarious. The wealth needed 
to support the political and social dignity of a senatorial family 
imposed a rigorous limit upon its size. Augustus therefore de¬ 
vised rewards for husbands and fathers in the shape of more 
rapid promotion in the senatorial career, with corresponding 
restrictions on the unmarried and the childless in the matter of 
inheriting property. 

The education of the young also came in for the attention of 
the Princeps. For the formation of character equal to the duties 
of war and government, the sciences, the fine arts and mere 
literature were clearly superfluous, when not positively noxious. 1 
Philosophy studied to excess did not fit a Roman and a senator. 2 
Only law and oratory were held to be respectable. But they must 
not be left to specialists or to mere scholars. To promote physical 
strength and corporate feeling in the Roman youth, Augustus 
revived ancient military exercises, like the Lusus Troiae 3 In the 
towns of Italy there was a counterpart—the collegia iuvenum , 
clubs of young men of the officer class. These bodies provided 

1 The study of Greek philosophy and science is of subordinate value—‘istae qui- 
dem artes, si modo aliquid valent, id valent) ut paulum acuant et tamquam irritent 
ingenia puerorum, quo facilius possmt maiora discere’ (Cicero, JJe re public a i, 30). 
No moral or political value—‘ncc meliores ob cam scientiam nec beatiores esse 
possumus’ (ib., 32). 

2 Tacitus, Agr. 4, 4: ‘se prima in iuventa studium philosophiae acrius ultraque 
quam concessum Romano ac senatori hausissc.’ 

3 On this, cf. H. M. Last, CAH x, 461 ff. 



446 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

an apprenticeship for military service, opportunities for social 
and political advancement—and centres for the propagation of 
correct sentiments about the government. 1 Augustus awarded 
commissions in the militia equestris to men approved by their 
towns (perhaps ex-magistrates). 2 The municipia , or rather the 
local dynasts who controlled them, were sufficiently aware of the 
qualities which the Princeps expected. 

To the governing class the penalties were in proportion to 
the duties of their high station. Marriage with freedwomen, 
though now forbidden to senators, was condoned in others—for 
it was better than no marriage. The Roman People was to con¬ 
template and imitate the ancient ideals, personified in their 
betters: but it w r as to be a purified Roman People. 

At Rome the decline of the native stock was palliated and 
compensated by a virtue singularly lacking in the city states of 
Greece but inculcated from early days at Rome by the military 
needs of the Republic, namely readiness to admit new members 
to the citizen body. 3 This generosity, which in the past had 
established Rome’s power in Italy on the broad basis that alone 
could bear it, was accompanied by certain grave disadvantages. 
Slaves not only could be emancipated with ease but were eman¬ 
cipated in hordes. The wars of conquest flooded the market with 
captives of alien and often inferior stocks. Their descendants 
swelled and swamped the ranks of the Roman citizens: 

nil patrium nisi nomcn hahet Romanus alumnus. 4 

Augustus stepped in to save the race, imposing severe restriction 
upon the freedom of individual owners in liberating their slaves. 5 
Yet even freedmen were given corporate dignity and corporate 
duties by the institution of the cult of the Lares compitales and 
the genius of Augustus at Rome, and by priesthoods in the towns. 6 

The Roman People could not be pure, strong and confident 
without pietas, the honour due to the gods of Rome. On some 
tolerable accommodation with supernatural powers, ‘pax deorum’, 
the prosperity of the whole community clearly depended. There 

1 L. R. Taylor y JRS xiv (1924), t 58 ff.; H. M. Last, CAH x, 461 ff. 

2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 46. Cf. above, p. 364. 

3 Tacitus, Ann. 11, 24. Cf. the observations of Philip V, King of Macedonia, 
ILS 8763. 

4 Propertius 4, 1, 37. 

5 On this legislation (2 u.c. and a.d. 4), cf. H. M. Last, CAH x, 432 ff. 

6 The Roman cult goes back to the organization of the city wards in 7 B.c. (Dio 
55, 8, 6f.), cf. ILS 9250. On this and on the municipal worship of Augustus, see 
L. R. Taylor, The Divinity of the Raman Emperor , 181 ff.; 215 ff. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 447 

were manifold signs of its absence. The ruinous horror of the 
Civil Wars, with threatened collapse of Rome and the Empire, 
engendered a feeling of guilt—it all came from neglect or the 
ancient gods. The evil went back much farther than Caesar or 
Pompeius, being symptom and product of the whole unhallowed 
and un-Roman era of Roman history. Temples had crumbled, 
ceremonies and priesthoods lapsed. No peace for the Roman, 
but the inherited and cumulative curse would propagate, from one 
generation of corruption to the next, each worse than the last, till 
the temples should be repaired. 1 Whose hand would Heaven 
guide to begin the work of restoration ? 

cui dahit partis scelus expiandi 
luppiter? 2 

There could be only one answer. The official head of the state 
religion, it is true, was Lepidus, the pontifex maximus, living in 
seclusion at Circeii. Augustus did not strip him of that honour, 
ostentatious in scruple when scruple cost him nothing. He could 
wait for Lepidus’ death. Better that he should—in recent history 
the dignity of pontifex maximus , in no way the reward of merit, 
was merely a prize in the game of politics. Augustus scorned to 
emulate his predecessors—Caesar gaining the office by flagrant 
bribery and popularity with the Roman mob, Lepidus through 
favour of Antonius, by a procedure condemned as irregular. 3 

As in all else, the First Citizen could act without law or title 
by virtue of his paramount auctoritas. Soon after the War of 
Actium and the triple triumph Rome witnessed his zealous care 
for religion—‘sacrati provida cura ducis’. 4 In the year 29 B.c. 
Janus was closed and an archaic ceremony long disused, the 
Augurium Salutis , was revived. Now and later the Princeps re¬ 
plenished the existing priestly colleges, calling again to life the 
ancient guild of the Arval Brethren: which meant enhanced 
dignity for the State and new resources of patronage. In 28 b.c. the 
Senate entrusted Augustus with the task of repairing all temples in 
the city of Rome. No fewer than eighty-two required his attention, 
so he claimed, no doubt with exaggeration, 5 passing over the con¬ 
siderable activity of the last decade. 

Two deities deserved special honour. In 29 b.c. the Temple 
of Divus Julius vowed by the Triumvirs was at last dedicated. 

1 Odes 3, 6, 1 ff. z lb. 1, 2, 29f. 

3 At least by Augustus, Res Gestae 10: ‘eo mor|[t]uo q[ui civilis] m[otus] occasione 
occupaverat.’ * Ovid, Fasti 2, 60 

5 Res Gestae 20 ; Livy 4, 20,7: ‘templorum omnium conditorem aut restitutorem.* 



448 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

The next year saw the completion of the great temple of Apollo 
on the Palatine. Neither god had failed him. Divus Julius pre¬ 
vailed over the Republic at Philippi, Apollo kept faith at Actium: 

vincit Roma fide Phoebe 1 

The myth of Actium was religious as well as national—on the 
one side Rome and all the gods of Italy, on the other the bestial 
divinities of Nile. 2 Phoebus, to be sure, was Greek in name and 
origin. But Phoebus had long been domiciled in Latium. Though 
the national spirit of Rome was a reaction against Hellas, there 
was no harm, but every advantage, in invoking the better sort of 
Greek deities on the right side, so that the War of Actium could 
be shown as a sublime contest between West and East. Rome was 
not only a conqueror—Rome was a protector of Greek culture. 

As though to strengthen this claim, measures were taken in 
Rome to repress the Egyptian cults, pervasive and alarmingly 
popular in the Triumviral period—they were banished now from 
the precincts of the city. 3 The national and patriotic revival of 
religion is a large topic; and a movement .so deep and so strong 
cannot derive its validity or its success from mere action by a 
government. There is much more authentic religious sentiment 
here than has sometimes been believed. 4 It will suffice to observe 
that Augustus for his part strove in every way to restore the old 
spirit of firm, dignified and decent worship of the Roman gods. 
That was the moral source of Rome’s power: 

nam quantum ferro tantum pietate potentes 
stamus. 5 

Though debased by politics, the notion of pietas had not been 
entirely perverted. Pietas once gave world-empire to the Roman, 
and only pietas could maintain it: 

dis te minorem quod geris, imperas: 
hinc omne principium, hue refer exitum.^ 

Virtus and pietas could not be dissociated; and the root mean¬ 
ing of virtus is ‘manly courage’. The Roman People occupied a 
privileged rank in the empire of all the world. Privilege should 
stand for service. If the citizen refused to fight, the city would 
perish at the hands of its enemies—or its mercenaries. Augustus 

1 Propertius 4, 6, 57. 2 Aen. 8, 698; Propertius 3, 11, 41 ff. 

3 Dio 53, 2, 4; 54, 6, 6. 

4 On the depth of the Augustan religious revival, cf. F. Altheim, A History of 

Roman Religion (1938), 369 ff. 5 Propertius 3, 22, 21 f. 

6 Horace, Odes 3, 6, 5 f. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 449 

appealed to the virtues of a warrior race. No superfluous exhor¬ 
tation, since the Romans had recently tasted the bitter realities 
of war. Next to the gods, Augustus' most urgent care was to 
honour the generals of ancient days, the builders of empire. 1 He 
caused their statues, with inscribed record of their deeds, to be 
set up in his new Forum, where the temple of Mars Ultor stood, 
itself a monument of victory and the scene of martial ceremonies. 
This gallery of national portraits had already been foreshadowed 
by the patriotic poets. 2 

The Romans were encouraged to regard themselves as a tough 
and martial people—no pomp of monarchs here or lies of Greek 
diplomats, 

non hie Atridae nec fandi fictor Ulixes: 
durum a stirpe genus. 3 

They were peasants and soldiers. Tradition remembered, or 
romance depicted, the consuls of the early Republic as identical 
in life, habit and ideals with the rough farmers whom they led 
to battle—generals and soldiers alike the products of ‘saeva 
paupertas’. 4 It was the virile peasant soldier, 

rusticorum mascula miiitum 
proles, 

who had stained the seas red with Carthaginian blood, who had 
shattered Pyrrhus, Antiochus and Hannibal. 5 

The ideal of virtue and valour was not Roman only, but Italian, 
ingrained in the Sabines of old and in Etruria, when Etruria was 
martial. 6 The fiercest of the Italici had recently fought against 
Rome in the last struggle of the peoples of the Apennine—above 
all the Marsi, ‘genus acre virum’, a tribe small in numbers but 
renowned for all time in war. In the exaltation of ‘Itala virtus' 
Rome magnified her valour, for Rome had prevailed over Italy. 
The last generation saw the Marsian and the Picene leading the 
legions of Rome to battle against the Parthians; and the Princi- 
pate, for all its profession of peace, called on Rome and Italy to 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 31,5: ‘proximum a dis immortalibus honorem memo¬ 
riae ducum praestitit, qui imperium p. R. ex minimo maximum reddidissent/ 

z Compare Horace, Odes 4,8, 13 ff.: ‘non incisa notis marmora publicis | per quae 
spiritus et vita redit bonis | post mortem ducibus’; also the lists of names in Odes 
1,12 (with a Scaurus who hardly belongs there) and in Virgil, Aen. 6, 824 ff. 

* Virgil, Aen. 9, 602f. 

4 Horace, Odes 1, 12, 43. For the type in a contemporary historian, cf. the Sabine 
Sp. Ligustinus (Livy 42, 34) who inherited from his father one iugerum of land and 
the ‘parvum tugurium’ in which he was born. He produced eight children. 

5 lb. 3, 6, 37f. 0 Georgies 2, 532ff., cf. 167 ff. 



450 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

supply soldiers for warfare all over the world. They were united 
now, and strong, a nation wrought by war out of alien stocks and 
strange tongues—Etruscan and Oscan, even Celtic and Illyrian. 
The prayer had been answered: 

sit Rorrtana potens ltala virtute propago! 1 

The New State of Augustus glorified the strong and stubborn 
peasant of Italy, laboriously winning from the cultivation of 
cereals a meagre subsistence for himself and for a numerous 
virile offspring : 

salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, 
magna virum! 2 

Where was that peasant now to be found ? In the course of two 
centuries the profits of empire, the influx of capital from Rome’s 
invisible export of governors and soldiers, along with improve¬ 
ment in the art and practice of agriculture, had transformed the 
economy of Italy. Over a hundred years earlier, the decline of 
the military population had excited the alarm and the desperate 
efforts of a small group of aristocratic statesmen. The reforms 
of the Gracchi were incomplete or baffled; and the small holding 
had not become any more remunerative since then. Samnium 
was a desolation after Sulla, and wide tracts of south-eastern Italy 
were occupied by graziers. The sons of Italy were scattered over 
the w r orld: many preferred to stay in the provinces or drift to the 
towns rather than return to a hard living in some valley of the 
Apennines. Small farmers there were to be sure, and cereals 
continued to be grown, though not for profit. 3 Thousands and 
thousands of veterans had been planted in Italy—but may more 
correctly be regarded as small capitalists than as peasants. 4 

It is by no means certain what class of cultivator the Georgies 
of Virgil were intended to counsel and encourage. The profi¬ 
teers from war and proscriptions had bought land. Though a 
number of these men may have practised commerce and might 
be called town-dwellers, especially the freedman class, the anti¬ 
thesis of urban and rural at this time in Italy was not complete 
and exclusive—the new proprietors would not be utterly alien to 

1 Aen. 12, 827. 2 Georgies 2, 173 f. 

3 On this, cf. above all M. Rostovtzeff, Soc. and Ec. Hist 59 ff. 

4 Not that they were bad farmers. Compare the precepts touching agriculture 
and the good life which the retired military tribune C. Castricius caused to be 
engraved on his sepulchre, for the edification of his freedmen (CIL xi, 600: Forum 
Livi). 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 451 

the practice of agriculture. Citizens of Italian municipia had 
mostly been born, or had lived, on country estates; and it will 
be recalled that such apparently sophisticated types of urban 
humanity as Seneca, the courtier and statesman, and the de¬ 
bauched grammarian Q. Remmius Palaemon were noted for the 
rich return they secured from their vines. 1 

But the advocates of the high ideals of the New State were 
not asked to examine the concepts of economic science, or reveal 
the manner of their operation. That would be inexpedient. The 
political theorists of antiquity from the spurious Lycurgus to the 
authentic and revolutionary Gracchi were at one in awarding to 
moral and military excellence the primacy over pecuniary profit. 
If the growing of corn brought no money to the peasant, if his 
life was stern and laborious, so much the better. He must learn 
to love it, for his own good and for the good of the State, cheerful 
and robust: 

angustam amice pauperiem pati 
robustus acri militia puer 
condiscat. 2 

This was not far from the ideal of economic self-sufficiency. 
The old-fashioned moralist might rejoice. Let foreign trade 
decline—it brought no good, but only an import of superfluous 
luxury and alien vices. 

So far the ideal. Italy was spared the realization of such per¬ 
verse anachronisms. The land was more prosperous than ever 
before. Peace and security returned to the whole world. The 
release of the capital hoarded by the Ptolemies for ages, or by 
apprehensive owners of property in the recent period of con¬ 
fiscation, quickened the pulse of trade, augmenting profits and 
costs. The price of Italian land rose steeply. 3 The rich grew 
richer. Their money went into landed property. Large estates 
grew larger. Prosperity might produce qualms no less than did 
adversity. Horace, in whom the horrors of the Perusine War had 
inspired visions of the Fortunate Isles, where nature provided 
all fruits without the work of man’s hand, might meditate for 
a moment on the evils of private property and envy the virtuous 
felicity of the nomads: 

campestres melius Scythae. 4 

1 Pliny, NH 14, 49 fF. Seneca bought the vineyard from Remmius (on which 
unsavoury character, cf. also Suetonius, De gramm. 23). 

2 Odes 3, 2, 1 ff. 3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 41, 1. 

4 Odes 3, 24, 9. 



452 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

The patriotic poet might deplore the seizure of plough-land for 
princely parks and villas, the encroachment of the wealthy and 
the eviction of the poor: 

non ita Romuli 
praescriptum ct intonsi Catonis 
auspiciis veterumque norma. 1 

But these were not the days of Romulus or of Cato the Censor; 
and that shaggy Cato himself, of peasant stock and a farmer, was 
no grower of cereals but a shrewd and wealthy exponent of more 
remunerative and more modern methods of cultivation. As in 
politics, so in economic life, there could be no reaction. None 
was intended. No thought of mulcting the rich men of Italy, 
curbing the growth of their fortunes, or dividing up their mon¬ 
strous estates for the benefit of the deserving and Roman poor, 
whose peasant ancestors had won glory and empire for Rome. 
The Revolution was over. Violence and reform alike were stayed 
and superseded. The rich were in power—conspicuous in their 
serried ranks were hard-headed and hard-faced men like Lollius, 
Quirinius and Tarius Rufus. With such champions, property 
might rest secure. 

The author of the most eloquent commendations of rustic 
virtue and plain living was himself a bachelor of Epicurean 
tastes, a man of property and an absentee landlord. It was 
observed with malicious glee that neither of the consuls who 
gave their names to the Lex Papia Poppaea had wife or child. 2 
One of them came of a noble Samnite family now reconciled to 
Rome: it might be added that the other was a Picene. That was 
no palliation. These men before all others should have provided 
the Ttala virtus’ that was held to be lacking in the decadent, 
pleasure-loving aristocracy of Rome. Among the intimate friends 
of Augustus were to be found characters like Maecenas, childless 
and vicious yet uxorious, and the unspeakable Vedius Pollio; and 
in his own household the moral legislation of the Princeps was 
most signally baffled by the transgressions of his daughter and 
his granddaughter—though in truth their offence was political 
rather than moral. Nor is it certain that the Princeps himself 
was above reproach, even with discount of the allegations of 
Antonius, the scandal about Terentia and all the gossip that 
infests the back-stairs of monarchy. 

That there was a certain duplicity in the social programme 
of the Princeps is evident enough. More than that, the whole 

1 Odes 2, 15, ioff. 2 Dio 56, 10, 3. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 453 

conception of the Roman past upon which he sought to erect the 
moral and spiritual basis of the New State was in a large measure 
imaginary or spurious, the creation conscious or unconscious of 
patriotic historians or publicists who adapted to Roman language 
Greek theories about primitive virtue and about the social 
degeneration that comes from wealth and empire. The Italian 
peasant may have been valorous and frugal: he was also narrow 
and grasping, brutal and superstitious. Nor is it evident that 
the Roman aristocrat of the golden age of the Scipiones was 
always the paragon of virtue that Cicero and his contemporaries 
affected to admire. There was another side to that. 

Yet the strong suspicion of fraud is not enough to lame the 
efficacy of the Augustan reform or damn its authors, whoever 
they were. The Augustus of history and panegyric stands aloof 
and alone, with all the power and all the glory. But he did not 
win power and hold it by his own efforts alone: was the ostensible 
author and prime agent in the policy of regeneration merely 
perhaps carrying out the instructions of a concealed oligarchy or 
the general mandate of his adherents? 

It was not Rome alone but Italy, perhaps Italy more than 
Rome, that prevailed in the War of Actium. The Principate 
itself may, in a certain sense, be regarded as a triumph of Italy 
over Rome: Philippi, Perusia and even Actium were victories of 
the Caesarian party over the nobiles. Being recruited in so large a 
measure from Roman knights of the towns of Italy, it found itself 
rewarded with power in the Senate and in the councils of the 
Princeps. The Roman aristocracy, avidly grasping the spoils of 
conquest, wealth, luxury and power, new tastes and new ideas, 
had discarded without repining the rugged ancestral virtues. But 
the ancient piety and frugality, respect for the family and loyalty 
to bonds of sentiment and duty were retained, with a conscious¬ 
ness of superiority, with pride and with resentment, in the towns 
of Italy. The Roman noble sneered at the municipal man—he was 
priggish and parsimonious, successful in business life, self- 
righteous and intolerably moral. The Italian bourgeoisie had their 
sweet revenge when the New State was erected at the expense of 
the nobiles , as a result of their feuds and their follies. 

That will not suffice to prove that the Princeps was merely a 
docile instrument in the hands of an uncompromising party of 
puritan nationalists. Augustus himself came of a municipal family. 

To his origin from a small and old-fashioned town in Latium 
certain features in his character may not unfairly be attributed— 



454 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

the hard realism, the lack of chivalry, the caution and the parsi¬ 
mony. His tastes, his language and his wit were homely: his religion 
and even his superstitions were native. 1 Augustus was a singularly 
archaic type. 2 Not indeed without culture—but he had not been 
deeply influenced by the intellectual movements of the capital, 
by Hellenic literature, science or scepticism. He was capable of 
dissimulation and hypocrisy, if ever a statesman was. But his 
devotion to the ancient ideal of the family and even to the ancient 
worship of the gods appears to be deep-rooted and genuine. He 
admired the aristocracy, for he was not one of them; he chastened 
them, but with a loving hand. For the respect due to aristocracy 
was traditional, and Augustus was a traditional member of the 
Italian middle class. No less genuine his patriotism: it might be 
guessed that his favourite line of verse was 

Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam . 3 

To this identity in origin and sentiment with a large class in 
Italy Augustus owed much of his success as a party leader and 
sufficient confidence to persist in the task of moral and social 
regeneration. The political structure created by the Princeps 
was solid yet flexible: it was not so easy to shape the habits of a 
whole people and restore the ideals of a governing class. 

That the official religion of the Roman People was formal 
rather than spiritual did not appear to the Roman statesman 
entirely a defect or a disadvantage; 4 and the Augustan revival 
need not shrink from the charge of studied antiquarianism. But 
the religion of the State, like the religion of the family, was not 
totally repugnant to sentiment. It was pietas , the typical Roman 
virtue. Augustus might observe with some satisfaction that he 
had restored a quality which derived strength from memories of 
the Roman past, attached mens sympathies to the majesty of the 
State and secured loyalty to the new regime. 

Civic virtue of this kind could exist in the Roman aristocracy 
along with a certain laxity of individual behaviour; and ability, 
courage or patriotism might lend to vice itself a certain specious 
charm. Augustus’ own views were narrow and definite. How far 
they won acceptance it is difficult to say. Of the efficacy of mere 

1 Suetonius, Dtvus Aug. go if. His protecting deity Apollo has indigenous 
features. Vediovis, worshipped by the Julii (ILS 2988), was identified with Apollo, 
cf. C. Koch, Der rtimische Juppitcr (1937), 80 ff. 

2 R. Heinze, Hermes lxv (1930), 385#. - = Vom Geist dcs Romcrtums , 171 fT. 

3 Aen . 1, 282, quoted on one occasion by Augustus (Suetonius, Dtvus Aug. 40, 5). 

4 Cf. the remarks of A. D. Nock, CAH x, 467. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 455 

legislation in such matters, a virtuous prince like Tiberius, him¬ 
self traditional in his views of Roman morality, was forced to 
express his doubts to the Senate. 1 That a change later came over 
the Roman aristocracy was evident to the historian Tacitus; no 
less evident that it was slow in operation and due to other causes 
than the legislation of Augustus, 2 for luxury, so far from being 
abated, was quite unbridled under his successors in the dynasty 
of the Julii and Claudii. Opulent families spent their substance 
in ostentation or perished through ambition and intrigue. Novi 
homines from the towns of Italy, and especially from the pro¬ 
vinces, took their place, the rigour of whose parsimony was not 
relaxed even by the splendid fortunes they amassed. Vespasian, 
an emperor from the Sabine country, ‘antiquo ipse cultu victuque’, 
effected much by his personal example. Yet more than all that, 
the sober standards prevalent in the society of Tacitus* own day 
were perhaps imposed by a mysterious revolution of taste. 3 

If Augustus was disappointed in the aristocracy, he might re¬ 
flect that Rome was not Italy; and Italy had been augmented— 
in the north there was a new Italy, but recently a province, 
populous, patriotic and proud of its retention of ancestral fruga¬ 
lity and virtue. Patavium usurped the proverbial repute of the 
Sabine land for prudery; 4 and Brixia refused to lag far behind. s 
Moreover, the Roman nation now transcended the geographical 
limits of Italy, for it included the descendants of Italian colonists 
and natives who had received the Roman citizenship—equally 
Roman before the law. Gades might export dancing-girls or a 
millionaire like Balbus. But there were many other towns in Spain 
and Gallia Narbonensis that soon might send to Rome their local 
aristocrats, well trained in ‘provincialis parsimonia’ and in loyalty 
to the State. Agricola was the civil servant of whom Augustus 
might well have dreamed. 

Not every novus homo , however, or provincial aristocrat was an 
exemplar of virtue and integrity. The Principate of Augustus 
did not merely idealize consul and citizen of the ancient peasant 
Republic, thus adding a sublime crown to the work of earlier 
generations which had transformed the history of Rome by assidu¬ 
ously expurgating the traces of alien influence, first the Etruscan 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 53 f. 2 lb. 3, 55. 

3 lb.: ‘nisi forte rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quem ad modum tem- 
porum vices ita morum vertantur.' 

4 Martial 11, 16, 8: ‘sis Patavina licet’; cf. Pliny, Epp. 1, 14, 6. 

5 Pliny, Epp. 1, 14, 4: ‘patria est ei Brixia ex ilia nostra Italia quae multum 
adhuc verecundiae, frugalitatis atque etiam rusticitatis antiquae retinet ac servat.’ 



456 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

and then the Greek: the inevitable romanticism of a prosperous 
age, based upon the convenient dogma that it retained liberty 
while discarding licence and achieved order without despotism, 
now suffused and transfigured the present, setting up as a model 
the character and habits of the middle class in the towns of Italy. 

Aristocratic libertas and fides were supplanted by the vigour 
and industry of the novus homo. The opening of a career to talent, 
however, was not always conducive to honourable behaviour in 
a society where profit and promotion depended upon the patro¬ 
nage of the government. To say nothing of the patent vice or 
rapacity of the greater novi homines , the friends of Augustus: the 
lesser crawded for favour, ignobly subservient, and practised 
delation for money and advancement. The moralist or the 
student of Italic nomenclature will observe with mixed feelings 
the disreputable conduct proved or alleged against a Vibidius, 
a Titedius, a Bruttedius. 1 

The necessary belief in municipal virtue rapidly extended to 
cover the provinces as well as Italy, with the same accepted 
terminology and standards. Beside provincial paragons will be 
set the figure of the earliest Narbonensian senator w r ho attained 
prominence in Rome, Cn. Domitius Afer, of resplendent talents 
as an orator but avid and ruthless. 2 The greatness of an imperial 
people derives in no small measure from the unconscious 
suppression of awkward truth. When Rome could admit with 
safety, or could no longer disguise, the decline of Italy and the 
transformation of her governing class, the rule of wealth was 
conveniently masked as a sovran blend of ancient Roman virtue 
and Hellenic culture. 

Under the Principate of Augustus the village as well as the 
small town received official commendation. Here too a contrast 
between appearance and reality. For all the talk about the peasant 
farmer, all the glorification of the martial ideals of an imperial 
race, service in the legions was unpopular in Italy, the levy de¬ 
tested. 3 The material was not available. Recruits from Italy 
south of the Apennines were by no means abundant. On the 
other hand, northern or provincial Italy, above all the parts 
beyond the Po, a region predominantly Celtic, pays a heavy toll to 

1 Vibidius (Tacitus, Ann. 2, 48); Titedius (ib. 85); Bruttedius (3, 66). Note also 
the orator Murredius, who dragged in obscene jokes (Seneca, Controv. 1,2,21; 23). 

2 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 52: ‘modicus dignationis et quoquo facinore properus clare- 
scere.’ Cf. the reticent obituary notice, Ann. 14, 19. 

3 Very impressive is the cumulative effect of Velleius 2, 130, 2; Tacitus, Ann. 4,4; 
Suetonius, Tib. 48, 2. 



THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 457 

the army. The social status of the recruit often defies but cannot 
always evade detection: it will seldom have been high. Indeed, 
natives! from the recently conquered valleys of the Alps were 
pressed into service in the legions of the Roman People. 1 On no 
interpretation could these aliens pass for Italian peasants, still less 
for members of the Italian bourgeoisie. 2 But they were a tough 
and military stock. That was what was wanted. 

Nor indeed was recruiting for the legions confined to Italy. 
The practices of the revolutionary age were unobtrusively per¬ 
petuated. Caesar had raised a legion in Narbonensis; Spain had 
already supplied whole legions as well as recruits. If there were 
more evidence available concerning the legions of the West in the 
Principate of Augustus, it may be presumed that men from Spain 
and Narbonensis would be discovered in large numbers. 3 There 
was less need for deception in the armies of the East. Galatians 
were regularly conscripted and given the Roman citizenship on 
enlistment. 4 Further, some of the finest fighting material in 
Europe was now being exploited for Rome’s wars—but not as 
regular troops. The legionary was more often an engineer: the 
auxilia did most of the fighting. 

By such expedients the fiction of a national army was gallantly 
maintained—but not without disappointments. The army en¬ 
gaged in completing the conquest of Spain in 19 B.c. was dejected 
and mutinous. 5 Agrippa dealt with the offenders. Again, the 
great rebellion of Illyricum in a.d. 6 showed up the martial 
valour of the race. The legionaries were dispirited and discon¬ 
tented, having been economically kept in service beyond the 
promised term; and ‘Itala virtus’ seemed singularly loath to 
volunteer for Balkan warfare, eager to evade the levy. 6 No new 

1 E. Ritterling, P-W xil, 1781. Some of these soldiers do not even simulate 
Latin nomenclature. The frequency of legionary recruits giving Transpadane towns 
as their domicile is easily explained—numerous tribes of attributi were attached 
to the Roman communities. 

2 Rostovtzeff (Soc. and Ec. Hist ., 42, cf. 499 f.) rates the social status of the 
legionary in the time of Augustus far too high. 

3 Indirect arguments can be used. For example, Narbonensis supplies only two 
auxiliary regiments; and that province is early evident in the Guard (ILS 2023); 
where, in the Julio-Claudian period even men from Noricum (ILS 2033) and 
Thracians from Macedonia (ILS 2030; 2032) can also be found. 

4 Compare the list of soldiers from Coptos, ILS 2483: two Galatians bear the 

name of M. Lollius. For another soldier called M. Lollius, IGRR 111,1476 (Ico- 
nium). 5 Dio 54, 11, 3. 

6 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 24, 1; cf. Pliny, AT/ 7, 149; ‘iuventutis penuria*. The 
soldiers were apathetic (Suetonius, Tib. 21,5, where Augustus’ words are quoted: 
‘inter tot rerum difficultates /cat rorravTTjv aTroOvfxtav twu crTparcvofievcoi^); and there 
was danger of mutiny (Dio 56, 12, 2). 



458 THE NATIONAL PROGRAMME 

legions could be raised. As a partial remedy for the lack of 
legionaries Augustus enrolled numerous freed slaves in separate 
formations with the revealing title of ‘cohortes voluntariorum ’. 1 

The war in Illyricum was a deadly blow, not merely to the 
foreign and frontier policy of Rome, but to the patriotic pride of 
Augustus. In dejection he thought of making an end of his life. 
But for that disaster he could have borne the loss of Varus’ three 
legions with more composure. 

Despite the varied checks and disappointments in Augustus’ 
policy of moral and patriotic regeneration, the effort had not been 
in vain: it was not one man’s idea, and the origins of it went back 
before Actium. The different classes in the Commonwealth had 
been aroused to a certain consciousness of dignity and duties as 
members of an imperial race. The soldiers learned obedience, 
the veterans the habit of a regular and useful life—not like Sulla’s 
men. Even freedmen were not treated as outcasts. Above all, the 
aristocracy was sharply recalled to its hereditary traditions of 
service; and the men of property, in their own interest and for 
their own defence, were made to understand that wealth and 
station imposed duties to the community. Like the Princeps him¬ 
self, the war profiteers became respectable. ‘Fortuna non mutat 
genus’, so Horace exclaimed in the revolutionary period . 2 The 
New State did its best to refute that archaic prejudice: 

in pretio pretium nunc est; dat census honorcs, 
census amicitias: pauper ubique iacct. 3 

Laws were not enough. The revolutionary leader had won 
power more through propaganda than through force of arms: 
some of his greatest triumphs had been achieved with but little 
shedding of blood. The Princeps, now a monopolist of the means 
of influencing opinion, used all his arts to persuade men to accept 
the Principate and its programme. 

1 Velleius 2, no, 7; Dio 55, 31, 1; Macrobius 1, 11, 32; Suetonius, Divus Aug . 
25, 2. 

2 Epodes 4, 6. 

3 Ovid, Fasti 1, 217 f. 



XXX. THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 


I N Rome of the Republic the aristocracy guided literature 
through individual patronage. As in politics, the other classes 
were susceptible to auctoritas , taking their tone and their tastes 
from above. Political invective was vigorous, ferocious—but indis¬ 
criminate, save when there was a government in being. Then it 
mustered for the attack. Pamphlets and poems assailed the Three¬ 
headed Monster, concentrating, as was just, upon Pompeius 
Magnus; and the plebs of Rome was encouraged to make public 
demonstrations in the Forum or at the theatre, rallying in defence 
of a constitution that meant nothing to them, and leaping with 
avidity upon any dramatic phrase that fitted the domination of 
Pompeius: 

nostra miseria tu es magnus. 1 

Agents with skill to evoke spontaneous manifestations of the true 
sentiments of the sovran people were indispensable to Roman 
politicians. Crassus had a happier touch than Pompeius. The 
demagogue Clodius was in his pay. 

The Dictatorship of Caesar at once became an object of lam¬ 
poons. More deadly, however, was the indirect attack, namely the 
publication of books extolling Cato, the martyr of Republican 
liberty. The praise or blame of the dead rather than the living 
foreshadows the sad fate of literature under the Empire. 

When the rule of Augustus is established, men of letters, a 
class whose habit it had been to attack the dominant individual 
or faction, appear to be fervently on the side of the government. 
It would be premature to discern in this metamorphosis a frank 
and generous recognition of the excellence of Augustus’ policy or 
an unequivocal testimony to the restoration of public liberty; but 
it does not follow that the poets and historians who lent their 
talent to the glorification of the new order in state and society 
were merely the paid and compliant apologists of despotism. 

The Republican politician adopted and patronized men of 
letters to display his magnificence and propagate his fame. The 
monarchic Pompeius possessed a domestic chronicler, the elo¬ 
quent Theophanes of Mytilene. Caesar, however, was his own 
historian in the narratives of the Gallic and Civil Wars, and his 


1 Cicero, Ad Att, 2, 19, 3. 



460 the organization of opinion 

own apologist—the style of his writing was effective, being mili¬ 
tary and Roman, devoid of pomp and verbosity; and he skilfully 
made out that his adversaries were petty, vindictive and un¬ 
patriotic. 1 Against the champions of Cato, insidious enemies, the 
Dictator retorted with pamphlets, his own and from his faithful 
Hirtius; and the reluctant Cicero was coerced into writing a letter 
that expressed some measure of approval. Constructive proposals 
from neutral or partisan men of letters were less in evidence. 
There was Sallustius, it is true, attacking both oligarchy and the 
power of money, with advocacy of moral and social reform. 2 The 
Dictator further encouraged the studies of the learned Varro, to 
revive interest in Roman religion and other national antiquities. 
As yet, however, no systematic exploitation of literature on the 
grand scale. That was left for Augustus. 

Propaganda outweighed arms in the contests of the Triumviral 
period. Augustus' chief of cabinet, Maecenas, captured the most 
promising of the poets at an early stage and nursed them into the 
Principate. Augustus himself listened to recitations with patience 
and even with benevolence. Me insisted, however, that his 
praises should be sung only in serious efforts and by the best 
poets. 3 The Princeps succeeded: other patrons of literature were 
left far behind. Pollio lost his Virgil. Messalla had to be content 
with the anaemic Tibullus. Fabius Maximus, the patrician dilet¬ 
tante, showed some favour to Ovid, and perhaps to Horace; 4 and 
Piso sSatisfied the philhellenic traditions of his family by suppor¬ 
ting a Greek versifier, Antipater of Thessalonica. 5 Pollio, it is 
true, was honoured by Horace in a conspicuous ode. Not so 
Messalla, however. As for the plebeian military men promoted 
under the New State, there is no evidence that they were interested 
in fostering letters or the arts. 

As was fitting, the poets favoured by the government proceeded 
to celebrate in verse the ideals of renascent Rome—the land, the 
soldier, religion and morality, the heroic past and the glorious 

1 On the Bellurn Civile , cf. L. Wickert, Klio xxx (1937), 232ff. 

2 The two Epistulae , even though authenticity be denied, are far from c6n- 
temptible. 

3 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 89, 3: ‘recitantes et benigne et patienter audiit, nec 
tantum carmina et historias, sed et orationes et dialogos. componi tamen aliquid 
de se nisi et serio et a praestantissimis offendebatur.’ 

4 Frequent references in Ovid, e.g. Ex Ponto 1,2, 1; 3,3, 1. Horace dedicates 
Odes 4, r to Fabius, ‘centum puer artium’. 

5 On whom see esp. C. Cichorius, R. Studien , 325 ff. The theory that the Ars 
Poetica was written at a late date in Horace’s life and was dedicated to two sons of 
this Piso is so plausible that it can dispense with the support of Porphyrio. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 461 

present. Not merely propaganda—something much greater was 
afoot, the deliberate creation of a Roman literature worthy to 
stand beside the achievement of Greece, a twin pillar to support 
the civilization of a world-empire that was both Roman and 
Greek. The War of Actium was shown to be a contest not so 
much against Greece as against Egypt and the East. The contest 
was perpetuated under the Principate by the Augustan reaction 
from contemporary Hellenism and from the Alexandrian models 
of the previous age, by the return to earlier and classic exemplars, 
to the great age of Greece. The new Roman literature was 
designed to be civic rather than individual, more useful than 
ornamental. Horace, his lyric vein now drying up, exerted him¬ 
self to establish the movement upon a firm basis of theory—and 
to claim the rank of classics for the better sort of contemporary 
literature. 

As in politics, the last generation was not rich in models to 
commend or imitate. Horace has never a word to say of Catullus 
and Lucretius. Those free and passionate individuals could find no 
place or favour in the civic and disciplined academies of a healthy 
community. Epicureanism, indeed, was heavily frowned upon, 
being a morally unedifying creed and likely to inculcate a distaste 
for public service. Stoicism, however, was salubrious and re¬ 
spectable: it could be put to good use. Living in a changed and 
more bracing atmosphere, under the watchword of duty and 
morality, Lucretius might perhaps have satisfied the fervour of 
a religious nature by composing a pantheistic poem to celebrate 
the pre-ordained harmony of the soul of man, the whole universe 
—and the ideal state now realized on earth: 

spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus \ ^j\ 

mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. 1 

Stoicism, indeed, stood for order and for monarchy. Catullus, 
however, could not have been domesticated, tamely to chant the 
regeneration of high society, the reiterated nuptials of Julia or 
the frugal virtues of upstarts enriched by the Civil Wars. His 
books would have been burned in the Forum, with the greatest 
concourse and applause of the Roman People. 

That did not matter. The New State had its lyric poet, techni¬ 
cally superb. Personal misfortune and political despair wrung 
from the youthful Horace the hard and bitter invective of his 
Epodes . Age and prosperity abated his ardour but did not impair 

1 Virgil, Aen. 6, 726f. 



462 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

the sceptical realism of his character—there is no warrant for 
loose talk about conversion to Stoicism. None the less, this Epi¬ 
curean man appeared to surrender to a romantic passion for 
frugality and virtue, a fervent sympathy with martial and imperial 
ideals. In his Odes may be discovered the noblest expression of 
the Augustan policy of social regeneration and the most illu¬ 
minating commentary upon it. After eloquent discourse upon 
high themes Horace recovers himself at the end: 

non hoc iocosae conveniet lyrae: 
quo, Musa, tendis? 1 

After praising the simple life and cursing wealth he adds: 

scilicet improbae 
crescunt divitiae; tamen 
curtae nescio quid semper abest rei. 2 

Without need of apology and more naturally came the moral, 
rustic and patriotic vein to the poet Virgil. The Georgies com¬ 
pleted ( c . 30 b.c.), Virgil was engaged in writing an epic poem 
that should reveal the hand of destiny in the earliest origins of 
Rome, the continuity of Roman history and its culmination in the 
rule of Augustus. As he wrote early in the poem, 

nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar 
imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, 

Iulius a magno demissum nomen Iulo. 1 

Later it is not the conqueror of the world but the coming in- 
augurator of the New Age, 

hie vir, hie est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, 

Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet 
saecula qui rursus Latio. 4 

The character of the epic hero is neither splendid nor striking. 
That was not intended. The perpetual guidance lavished upon 
the hero is likewise repugnant to romantic notions. Aeneas is an 
instrument of heaven, a slave to duty. ‘Sum pius Aeneas’, as he 
stamps himself at once. Throughout all hazards of his high 
mission, Aeneas is sober, steadfast and tenacious: there can be no 
respite for him, no repose, no union of heart and policy with an 
alien queen. Italy is his goal—‘hie amor, haec patria est.’ And 
so Aeneas follows his mission, sacrificing all emotion to pietas , 

1 Odes 3, 3, 69 f. 2 lb. 3, 24, 62 ff. 

5 Aen. 1, 286 ff. 4 lb. 6, 791 ff. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 463 

firm in resolution but sombre and a little weary. The poem is 
not an allegory; but no contemporary could fail to detect in 
Aeneas a foreshadowing of Augustus. Like the transference of 
Troy and her gods to Italy, the building of the New Rome was 
an august and arduous task.: 

tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. 1 

Destiny foretold the coming of a great ruler in Italy and con¬ 
queror of all the world: 

sed fore qui gravidam imperiis belloque frementem 
Italiam regeret, genus alto a sanguine Teucri 
proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem. 2 

None would have believed it, but Rome's salvation issued from 
a Greek city. The priestess of Phoebus announced it: 

via prima salutis, 

quod minime reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe. 3 

From the first decision in council with his friends at Apollonia, 
the young Caesar had not wavered or turned back. Announced 
by Apollo, his path lay through blood and war, 

bella, horrida bella, 
et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. 4 

Accompanied by his trusty Achates he was to fight the intractable 
peoples of Italy and to prevail, to establish cities and civilized 
life: 

helium ingens geret Italia populosque ferocis 
contundet, moresque viris et moenia ponet. 5 

His triumph did not bring personal domination, but the unity of 
Rome ana Italy, reconciliation at last. That w r as his mission: 

nec mihi regna peto: paribus se legibus ambae 
invictae gentes aetema in foedera mittant. 6 

In the same years the historian Livy was already at work upon 
the majestic and comprehensive theme of his choice, the prose 
counterpart of Virgil’s epic: 

res Italas Romanorumque triumphos. 7 

Like other literary compositions fostered by the government, 
Livy’s history was patriotic, moral and hortatory. Even 
antiquarianism had its uses. But history did not need to be 
antiquarian—it could be employed, like poetry, to honour the 

1 lb. i, 33. 2 lb. 4, 229ff- 1 lb. 6, 96f. 4 lb. 6, 86f. 

5 lb. i, 263f. * lb. 13, igof. Mb. 8, 626. 



464 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

memory of ancient valour, revive the pride of the nation and edu¬ 
cate coming generations to civic virtue. 

The story of the first days of the city, established as the old 
poet recorded ‘augusto augurio’, called for a consecrated word 
and for commemoration of the Founder of Rome—‘deum deo 
natum, regem parentemque urbis Romanae’J But it would not 
do to draw too precise a parallel. The Romulus of legend already 
possessed too many of the authentic features of Caesar the Dicta¬ 
tor, some of them recently acquired or at least enhanced. Romu¬ 
lus was a king, the favourite of plebs and army, less acceptable 
to the Senate. 

If the later books of Livy with their record of recent and con¬ 
temporary history had been preserved, they would no doubt set 
forth the ‘lessons of history’ in a vivid and convincing form. An 
excellent source soon became available, no less than the bio¬ 
graphical memoir in which the Princeps recorded his arduous and 
triumphant career. Livy, like Virgil, was a Pompeian: he ideal¬ 
ized the early career of Pompeius, controverting Sallustius. When 
Pompeius thus became a respectable figure, so did Octavianus. 
It was the fashion to be Pompeian rather than Caesarian, for that 
was the ‘better cause ’. 1 2 It may be presumed that Augustus’ 
historian also spoke with respect of Brutus and Cassius—they 
had fought for the constitution; and even with praise of Cato— 
Cato stood for the established order. 

Virgil, Horace and Livy are the enduring glories of the Princi- 
pate; and all three were on terms of personal friendship with 
Augustus. The class to which these men of letters belonged had 
everything to gain from the new order. Both Virgil and Horace 
had lost their paternal estates in the confiscations that followed 
Philippi or the disorders of the Perusine War: they subsequently 
regained their property, or at least compensation. History does 
not record, or legend embroider, any loss sustained by Livy— 
the historians did not excite the interests of biographers and 
scholiasts as did the poets. But the opulent city of Patavium 
certainly had to endure severe requisitions when Pollio governed 
the Cisalpina: the wealthy went into hiding then, and not a single 
slave betrayed his master . 3 If Livy, Horace and Virgil had 
private and material reasons for gratitude to Augustus, that fact 


1 Livy 1, 16, 3. On Romulus, cf. also above, pp. 305 f.; 313 f. 

2 Tacitus, Arm. 4, 34. The term ‘Pompeianus’, however, need not denote an 
adherent of Pompeius. The Romans lacked a word for ‘Republican'. 

J Macrobius 1, n, 22. Patavium was for the Senate in 43 B.c., cf. Phil. 12, 10. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 465 

may have reinforced, but it did not pervert, the sentiments natural 
to members of the pacific and non-political order in society. On 
the other hand, their genius was not the creation of the Augustan 
Principate. They had all grown to manhood and to maturity in 
the period of the Revolution; and they all repaid Augustus more 
than he or the age could give them. 

Horace was the son of a wealthy freedman from Venusia. 
Virgil and Livy had a more respectable origin. Whatever racial 
differences the curious or the uncritical might be disposed to 
infer between Mantua, in legend a foundation of the Etruscans, 
and Patavium, the city of the Illyrian Veneti, they cannot be 
detected in the character or in the political sentiments of Virgil and 
Livy. Both may be taken as fairly typical representatives of the 
propertied classes of the new Italy of the north, which was patri¬ 
otic rather than partisan. The North, unlike so many parts of 
Italy, had no history of its own, with memories of ancient in¬ 
dependence from Rome—or recent hostility. As far as concerned 
the politics of Rome, its loyalties were mixed and confused. 
There was patriotic recollection of the great Marius who had 
saved Italy from the German invader, there was devotion to 
Caesar who had championed the communities of Italia Trans- 
padana and secured them full Roman citizenship. But the men of 
the North, though alert and progressive, were far from being 
revolutionaries. In many respects, indeed, their outlook was 
notably old-fashioned and traditional. Republican sympathies 
were openly expressed. From his father Cassius inherited a 
connexion with the Transpadani ;* and Brutus' father had been 
besieged at Mutina by Pompeius. In the time of Augustus, 
Mediolanium preserved with pride the statues of the Liberators . 2 
On the other hand, Bononia was in the client da of the Antonii. 

But all these diverse loyalties, as was fitting in a colonial and 
frontier zone, were transcended in a common national devotion 
to Rome. Further, as might be expected of a region that had 
only recently become a part of Italy, the name ‘Italian’ bore a 
heavier emphasis and a fuller emotional content than elsewhere . 3 
For all the talk of a united Italy and all the realities of reconcilia¬ 
tion, there must still have been Romans who were a little shocked 
at hearing the army of the Roman People described as ‘Italians’: 

hinc Augustus agens ltalos in proelia Caesar. 4 

1 Adfam. 12, 5, 2. 2 Plutarch, Comp. Dionis et Bruli 5 ; Suetonius, De rhet. 6. 

3 The writer here wishes to acknowledge his debt to certain unpublished ob¬ 
servations of Mr. G. E. F. Chilver. 4 Aen. 8 , 678. 



466 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

Augustus was singularly fortunate in discovering for his epic poet 
of Italy a man whose verse and sentiments harmonized so easily 
with his own ideas and policy. Here was his tota Italia , spon¬ 
taneous and admirable. To Virgil the Transpadane, Actium is 
the victory of Italy, not of Rome only. This conception does not 
find expression in the versions of Horace and Propertius. Pro¬ 
pertius again, when singing the praises of Italy in a patriotic vein, 
invokes, not Italy, but the name of Rome: 

omnia Romanae cedent miracula terrae. 1 

Not all the poets were inclined by character or situation to such 
unreserved eulogies of the New State as were Virgil and Horace. 
Maecenas also took up Propertius, a young Umbrian in whom 
something of the fire and passion of the Transpadane Catullus 
was born again. He came from Asisium, neighbour city to un¬ 
happy Perusia, from that Italy which paid the bitter penalty for 
becoming involved in a Roman civil war: 

si Perusina tibi patriae sunt nota sepulcra 
(Italiae duris funera temporibus 
cum Romana suos egit discordia civis), 
sic mihi praecipue pulvis Etrusca dolor.- 

A relative had fallen in the War of Perusia . 3 Propertius’ distaste 
for war was well-founded. He claimed to be the poet of love and 
of peace: 

pacis amor deus est, pacem veneramur amantes. 4 
No son of his would be a soldier: 

nullus de nostro sanguine miles erit. 5 

The family had been despoiled of property during the Civil Wars . 6 
None the less, the poet had eminent connexions, the Aelii Galli, 
and influential friends, Maecenas and the Volcacii, a Perusine 
family of consular standing . 7 Like his kinsman, C. Propertius 
Postumus, he might have aspired to senatorial rank. 

Propertius preferred his Cynthia, his Alexandrian art and the 
fame of a Roman Callimachus: he recalls, in spirit and theme, 
the earlier generation. But even Propertius was not untouched 
by the patriotic theme, or the repeated instances of Maecenas. 

1 Propertius 3, 22, 17. 2 lb. 1, 22, 3 ff. 3 lb. 1, 21. 

4 lb. 3, 5, 1. 5 lb. 2, 7, 14. 6 lb. 4, i, 127 ff. 

7 Aelia Galla, wife of Postumus (3, 12), who is presumably C. Propertius Postu¬ 
mus (ILS 914). The Tullus several times addressed by Propertius (e.g. 1, x, 9) is 
the nephew of L. Volcacius Tullus, cos. 33 b.c. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 467 

For all his dislike of war, he could turn away from his love and 
lover’s melancholy to celebrate with fervour, and with no small 
air of conviction, the War of Actium, or to plead in solemn tones 
for the avenging of Crassus . 1 

Antiquities, however, were more in the line of a Callimachus 
than was contemporary history. Propertius was able to recount 
ancient legends and religious observances with sympathy as well 
as with elegance. More than all this, however, the lament which 
he composed in memory of a Roman matron, Cornelia the w r ife 
of Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, reveals a gravity and depth of feel¬ 
ing beside which much of the ceremonial literature of Augustan 
Rome appears hard, flashy and hollow . 2 Propertius belonged to 
an old civilization that knew and honoured the majesty of death 
and the dead. 

Propertius might have been a highly remunerative investment 
for Maecenas. He died young—or abandoned the art altogether. 
Ovid, his junior by about ten years, outlasted Augustus and died 
in exile at the age of sixty. Ovid in his Amores sang of illicit love 
and made fun of the army: 

militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido. 3 

It was not merely improper verse that incurred the displeasure 
of Augustus. Poetry, it was agreed, should be useful. Ovid 
accepted that principle—and turned it inside out. He might have 
instructed the youth of Rome to honour the past, to be worthy of 
Rome in valour and in virtue. Instead, he composed a didactic 
poem on the Art of Love. The tract was not meant to be taken 
seriously—it was a kind of parody. Augustus did not see the 
joke. Like the early Germans depicted by Tacitus, he did not 
think that moral laxity was a topic of innocent amusement . 4 

Nor can Ovid himself be taken seriously in his role of a liber¬ 
tine or a corrupter of youth. He made the conventional excuse 
of the erotic poet—his page may be scabrous, but his life is 
chaste: 

vita verecunda est, Musa iocosa mea. 5 

Despite earlier vaunts of erotic prowess, he is probably to be 
believed. The Corinna of the Amores cannot match Propertius’ 

1 Propertius 3, 11 ; 4, 6 (Actium); 2, 10; 3,4 (conquest and revenge in the East). 

2 lb. 4, 11. 3 Amores 1, 9, 1. 

4 Tacitus, Germ . 19, 3: ‘nemo enim illic vitia ridet, nec corrumpere et corrumpi 
saeculum vocatur.’ 

5 Tristia 2, 354. No Roman husband, even in the lowest class of society, had any 
cause to suspect him (ib. 351 f.). 



468 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

Cynthia. Corinna is literature, a composite or rather an imagin¬ 
ary figure. The poet himself, who had married three times, was 
not unhappy in his last choice, a virtuous and excellent woman . 1 

That did not matter. Ovid was a disgrace. He had refused to 
serve the State. Sulmo and the Paelignians, a virile and hardy 
race, should have made a better contribution to the New Italy 
and achieved a nobler repute than to be known as the home of an 
erotic poet. Augustus did not forget. It was in vain that Ovid 
interspersed his trifles with warm praise of the reigning dynasty 
and even turned his facile pen to versifying the Roman religious 
calendar. The scandal of Augustus’ granddaughter Julia (a.d. 8) 
provided the excuse. There can be no question of any active 
complicity on the part of Ovid; the mysterious mistake to which 
the poet refers was probably trivial enough . 2 But Augustus was 
vindictive. He wished to make a demonstration—perhaps to find 
a scapegoat whose very political harmlessness would divert atten¬ 
tion from the real offences of Julia, her husband and her osten¬ 
sible paramours, and create the impression that injured morality 
was being avenged. The auctoritas of Augustus was enough . 3 
Ovid received instructions to depart to Tomi, a Greek city on the 
coast of the Black Sea. He could hardly have been sent farther. 

Poetry and history were designed to work upon the upper and 
middle classes of a regenerated society. Their influence and their 
example would cause the lessons of patriotism and morality to 
spread more widely and sink more deeply. For such as were not 
admitted to the recitations of the rich, or lacked either the taste 
for good books or the means of acquiring them, there were 
visible admonitions of every kind. 

The Republican dynast solicited the favour of the sovran 
people by lavish display at games, shows and triumphs. As a 
showman, none could compete with Augustus in material re¬ 
sources, skill of organization and sense of the dramatic. A quarter 
of a million of the Roman plebs were on his lists, as permanent 
recipients of the corn-dole. On special occasions there were dis¬ 
tributions of wine and oil. But he could be firm. When famine 
came and the mob complained of the dearness of wine, there was 
always the excellent water, so the Princeps pointed out, from the 

1 She was a protegee of Marcia, the wife of Paullus Fabius Maximus (Ex Ponto 
i, 2, 136 ff.). 

2 Tristia 2, 207: ‘duo crimina, carmen et error/ The poet is very discreet about 
the precise nature of the ‘error’. 

3 lb., 131 f.: ‘nec mea decreto damnasti facta senatus | nec mea sclecto iudice 
iussa fuga est/ 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 469 

aqueducts which his son-in-law had constructed for the people . 1 
He could have added that there were now public baths as well. 
But complaints were rare. The poor expressed their gratitude 
by crowding to the Capitol on the first day of the year and con¬ 
tributing small coins to a fund in honour of the Princeps: the 
proceeds went towards dedications in the temples . 2 That was 
not all. When Augustus carried out his organization of the city 
wards, the vicomagistri were put in charge of shrines where 
honour was paid to the lares co?npitales, with whom was associated 
the genius of the Princeps . 3 

Each and every festival was an occasion for sharpening the 
loyalty of the people and inculcating a suitable lesson. The family 
policy of the New State was vividly and triumphantly advertised 
when a sturdy plebeian from Eaesulae marched to the Capitol 
and offered sacrifices there, accompanied by the procession of his 
sixty-one living descendants in three generations . 4 Even slaves 
couid be commended—Augustus set up a monument in honour 
of a girl who had produced five children at one birth. s For 
reasons less obvious a centenarian actress was produced at games 
vowed and celebrated for the health of Augustus ; 6 and a rhino¬ 
ceros was solemnly exhibited in the voting-booths of the Roman 
People . 7 

When Lepidus at last died in 12 B.c., Augustus assumed the 
dignity of pontifex maximus. To witness the induction—or rather 
to confer the grant, for Augustus restored election to the People, 
in pointed contrast to Antonius’ action on the last occasion — 
there flocked to Rome from the towns of Italy such a concourse 
as had never before been seen . 8 This unique and spontaneous 
manifestation bore the character of a plebiscite expressing loyalty 
to the Princeps and confidence in the government. 

There were less spectacular but more permanent methods of 
suggestion and propaganda . 9 When the man of the people turned 
a coin in his palm he might meditate on the aspirations or the 
achievements of the government stamped in some concentrated 
phrase— Libertatis P. R. Vindex, Civibus Servateis or Signis Re- 
ceptis . It is a little surprising that the rich vocabulary of politics 

1 Suetonius, Dhrus Aug. 42, 1. 

2 lb., 57, 1; ILS 92 f. and 99. 3 Above, p. 446. 

4 Pliny, NH 7, 60. 5 Gellius 10, 2, 2. 

6 Pliny, NH 7, 158. This was in a.d. 9. 

7 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 43, 4. 8 Res Gestae 10. 

9 Cf. M. P. Charlesworth, ‘The Virtues of a Roman Emperor: Propaganda and 

the Creation of Belief’ ( The British Academy , Raleigh Lecture , 1937)- 



470 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

was not more frequently drawn upon. Tota Italia would not 
have been out of place. 

The Princeps* own form and features were reproduced in 
Rome and over all the world. It is true that he caused no fewer 
than eighty silver statues in the city to be melted down and con¬ 
verted into offerings to Apollo, his patron. 1 Other materials were 
available. The loyal citizen might gaze upon Augustus in the 
shape of the young revolutionary leader, resolute and almost 
fierce in expression, or the priest with veiled head, aged, austere 
and remote. Most revealing, perhaps, is the mailed figure from 
Prima Porta, showing the Princeps in his middle years, firm and 
martial but melancholy and dedicated to duty: 

Troius Aeneas, pictate insignis et armis. 2 

The august motives of war and peace received public and monu¬ 
mental commemoration. The official treatment of these themes 
makes much Augustan poetry seem an inspired anticipation—and 
shows with what startling fidelity the poets expressed the spirit 
of the national programme. In 13 B.c., when both Augustus and 
Agrippa had returned from the provinces, with the Empire pacified 
and new conquests about to begin, the Senate voted that an altar 
of Pax Augusta should be set up. The monument was dedicated 
three or four years later. On its sculptured panels could be seen 
the Princeps, his family and his friends moving in solemn pro¬ 
cession to sacrifice. A grateful Senate and a regenerated people 
participated. The new regime was at peace with the gods and 
honoured the land. Earth requited with the gift of her fruits— 
‘iustissima tellus*. The figure of Terra Mater, benign and majes¬ 
tic, was the source, the guarantee and the testimony of prosperity. 
Nor was the significant past to be omitted—Aeneas appears in 
the act of sacrifice after he has seen the portent that promises to 
his family an abiding home in Italy. 

Pax Augusta could not be dissociated from Victoria Augusti . 
The martial origin and martial virtues of people and dynasty 
were fittingly recalled by the Temple of Mars Ultor and the 
adjacent Forum of Augustus. 3 This was the shrine and the set¬ 
ting where the Senate debated on war and peace, where generals 
offered prayers before going to their armies or thanksgiving when 
returning from successful wars. Around the Forum stood the 
mailed statues of military men with the inscribed record of their 

1 Res Gestae 24. 2 Aen. 6, 403. 

1 Dio 55, 10, 2 fF. (2 b.c.); Res Gestae 21 and 29; Suetonius, Divus Aug. 29, 1 f. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 471 

res gestae , from Aeneas and Romulus in the beginning down to 
recent worthies who had held triumphs or received the ornamenta 
triumphalia in lieu of that distinction. In the temple itself three 
deities were housed in concord, Mars, Venus Genetrix and Divus 
Julius. Mars and Venus were the ancestors of the Julian house. 
The temple of Mars the Avenger had been vowed by Caesar’s 
son at Philippi when he fought against the assassins of his parent, 
the enemies of the Fatherland. Divus Julius was the watchword 
of the Caesarian army; and Divus Julius had been avenged by 
his son and heir. This dynastic monument is a reminder, if such 
be needed, that Dux was disguised but not displaced by Princeps. 

Augustus was Divifilms. The avenging of Caesar had been the 
battle-cry and the justification of Caesar’s heir. Antonius, on the 
other hand, was remiss, willing even to admit an accommodation 
with the assassins. He was only incited to pay some honour to 
his dead benefactor by the spur of the young Caesar’s political 
competition, six months after the Ides of March. All three 
Triumvirs concurred in the deification of Caesar; the policy was 
Octavianus’, his too the most intense exploitation and the solid 
advantage. In the feverish and credulous atmosphere of the 
Revolution portents of divine favour for Caesar’s heir were seen, 
recalled or invented everywhere, especially when the guaran¬ 
tors had disappeared . 1 The wife of C. Octavius fell asleep in 
the temple of Apollo and was visited by a snake. On the very 
day of the birth of his son, the great astrologer Nigidius Figulus 
cast the horoscope—a ruler of the world was portended. When 
the child could first speak, he bade the frogs be silent. No frog 
croaked in that place ever again. When Caesar’s heir entered 
Rome for the first time, the sun was surrounded with a halo; 
and the omen of Romulus greeted his capture of Rome in the 
next year. Cicero in a political speech described his young ally as 
‘divinus aduleseens ’. 2 The epithet was rhetorical, not religious: 
he also applied it to the legions that had deserted the consul 
Antonius, ‘heavenly legions’. But the orator would have been 
shocked had he known that the testimony of his earlier dreams 
would be preserved and invoked—a boy descending from heaven 
by a golden chain, alighting on the Capitol and receiving an 
emblem of sovranty from Jupiter, and recognized again by Cicero 
on the next day when he had the first sight of Caesar’s grand¬ 
nephew in the company of the Dictator. 

Perusia, Philippi and Actium all had their portents. With 

1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 94 ff. 2 Phil. 5, 43. 



472 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

victory, the flood of miracles and propaganda was sensibly abated 
but did not utterly cease. A more enduring instrument of power 
was slowly being forged. Augustus strove to revive the old reli¬ 
gion : but not everybody was susceptible to the archaic ritual and 
austere appeal of the traditional gods of Rome. Nor was Divus 
Julius enough. His son could hardly have prevented, even had 
it been expedient, the gratitude of the people to himself from 
taking the form of honours almost divine. 

Augustus was not a god, though deification would come in due 
course, from merit and for service, as to Hercules, who had made 
the world habitable for mankind, and to Romulus, the Founder of 
Rome. In the meantime, his birthday and his health, his virtues 
and his attributes could be suitably celebrated. Worship might 
not be paid to the man but to the divine power within him, his 
genius or his numen: 

praesenti tibi matures largimur honores, 
iurandasque tuum per numen ponimus aras. 1 

In Rome the magistri vicorum had their altars; likewise through¬ 
out Italy and in Roman towns abroad the officiants of the new 
civic cult, the seviri or augustales. These observances attested 
devotion to the government and seconded the dynastic and mon¬ 
archic policy of Augustus: a noticeable spread and intensification 
of the cult towards the year 2 b.c. reflects his overt designs for 
the succession of Gaius and Lucius. He did not need it so much 
for himself. At the colony of Acerrae in Campania a centurion 
set up an altar to the young princes with a verse inscription 
rendering them the honours due to heroes and anticipating their 
rule: 

nam quom te, Caesar, tern [pus] exposcet dcum 
caeloque repetes scd[em qua] mundum reges 
sint hei tua quei sorte tefrrae] huic imperent 
regantque nos felicihufs] voteis sueis. 2 

When they died, the town council of Pisa gave vent to patriotic 
grief in lapidary commemoration of inordinate length . 3 

From Rome sentiment radiated forth to the Roman towns—or 
rather, the towns in sedulous loyalty imitated for the expression 
of their own sentiments the themes and forms made standard by 
official policy in the capital. At Potentia ; n Picenum a sevir set 
up a replica of the famous shield recording the cardinal virtues 

1 Horace, Epp. z, i, 15 f. 2 ILS 137. 

3 ILS 139 f. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 473 

of Augustus. 1 Many loyal towns possessed their own copies of the 
Fasti consulares and of the official religious calendar. 2 In Arretium 
were to be seen the statues and inscriptions of Roman generals, 
imitating Augustus’ Forum. 3 At Carthage there stood an altar of 
the Gens Augusta reproducing, at least in part, the sculptures of 
the Ara Pacts Augustae ; 4 and altars at Tarraco and Narbo were 
dedicated to the cult of the numen of Augustus. 5 

Italy and the provinces of the West had sworn a military oath 
of personal allegiance to the military leader in the War of Actium: 
it did not lapse when he became a magistrate at Rome and 
in relation to the laws of Rome. A similar oath, it may be pre¬ 
sumed, was administered to the Eastern provinces when they 
were reconquered from Antonius. Later at least, soon after the 
territory of Paphlagonia was annexed to the province of Galatia, 
the inhabitants of the region, natives and Roman citizens alike, 
swore by all gods and by Augustus himself a solemn and com¬ 
prehensive oath of loyalty to the ruler and to his house (3/2 B.c.). 6 

In regions where submission to kings was an ingrained habit 
and inevitable fashion, it was natural that the ruler should be an 
object of veneration, with honours like the honours due to gods. 
In Egypt, indeed, Augustus succeeded Ptolemy as Ptolemy had 
succeeded Pharaoh—a god and lord of the land. Elsewhere in the 
East Augustus inherited from the dynasts Pompeius, Antonius 
and Caesar, along with their clientela , the homage they enjoyed. 
Caesar accepted honours from whomsoever voted, no doubt in 
the spirit in which they were granted: policy and system cannot be 
discovered. Once again Augustus stands revealed as the deliber¬ 
ate founder of monarchy, the conscious creator of a system. For 
himself and for the dynasty he monopolized every form and sign 
of allegiance; no proconsul of Rome ever again is honoured in 
the traditional fashion of the eastern lands. The language of that 
‘Graeca adulatio’ so loathsome to Republican sentiment becomes 
more and more lavish and ornate. Not only is Augustus, like his 
predecessors, a god and saviour; not only does he take from Pom¬ 
peius the title of ‘warden of land and sea’; 7 not only do cities 

' ILS 82. 

Cf. J. Gagt \Res GestaeDivi Augusti( 1935), 155 ff. Urbs Salviaevenhad th eFasti 
trntmphales {Vann, e'p ., 1926, 121, cf. A. Degrassi, Riv. difit . lxiv(i 936 ), 274ff.). 

' ILS 50, 54, <;6 60. Cf. the inscriptions of Aeneas and of Romulus at Pompeii, 
ILS 63 f. ‘ 

4 On this, K. Strong in CAH x, 552 and Vol. of Plates iv, 134. 

5 Tarraco, Quintilian 6, 3, 77; Narbo, ILS 112. ^ , 6 ILS 8781. 

^ 7 IGRR IV, 309, cf. 315 (Pergamum): [ndarjs] yij[s k]clI fljaJAdow?? [fJrrfaTrJrf^i']. 
Cf. the dedication to Pompeius, ILS 9459 (Miletopolis); above, p. 30. 



474 THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 

compete, pouring their cascades of dithyrambic prose, as Sardis 
in inordinate effusions honouring the princes Gaius and Lucius . 1 
The assemblies of whole provinces are now organized to display 
gratitude and homage. Galatia builds a temple for the joint wor¬ 
ship of Augustus and the Goddess Rome . 2 Asia is incited by that 
loyal proconsul, the patrician Paullus Fabius Maximus, to adopt 
the birthday of the Princeps as the beginning of its calendar-year; 
for that day announced good tidings to the world . 3 Asia surpasses 
decency in the thanks it renders to divine providence . 4 If such 
was the demeanour of citizens or free men, the fervent zeal may 
be imagined with which kings, tetrarchs and petty tyrants pro¬ 
moted the cult of their patron, friend and master. They gave 
cities his name, they erected temples in his honour . 5 One of the 
earliest and most zealous to propagate the new faith was Herod 
the king of Judaea . 6 

In the East, Roman citizens joined with Greeks in their wor¬ 
ship of Augustus as a god. The West was different. The Roman 
towns had altars but not temples, as at Tarraco and at Narbo. 
There was as yet no provincial cult in these regions, for the 
colonies and municipia were autonomous units of administration 
and integral parts of the Roman People. Moreover, the Roman 
citizen of the towns with his tradition of law and government 
could respect the magistrate and the imperator without worship¬ 
ping power in the eastern fashion. Such at least was the theory 
in so far as concerned Gallia Narbonensis and the more civilized 
parts of Spain. 

The Gaul which Caesar had conquered received special treat¬ 
ment. The justification for Roman intervention and for Roman 
rule was the defence of Gaul against the German invader. When 
the Romans set out to conquer Germany, they intended to em¬ 
ploy the levies of the chieftains of Gallia Comata and strove to 
give the war the character of a crusade. To this end Drusus 
dedicated at Lugdunum an altar to Rome and Augustus where 
deputies from the peoples of Comata could gather and manifest 
their loyalty . 7 As in Galatia or in the cities of Asia, the aristocracy 

1 IGRR iv, 175O. 

2 OGIS 533 (Ancyra). 

3 lb., 458, 11, 1. 40 f.: 7 )p^v Sc Tib KO(jfio) run’ St' avroi’ zvavy€\i[a)v r) yeveflAto?] J 
rod 6 eov. 

♦ lb., 1. 33 f.: €7rc[iS^ 7 ) rraura] hcara^aaci tov filou r)p.<jjv npovota arrouhr^v 
€L<j€u[€VKapi]€.ur^ Kal <f>cXoTcp,iav to reXrjOTarov tu> fit oj StCKOcr/XTifaev] | evevKafidvrj 
tov 2 e/ 3 acrroV, ktX. Compare the inscr. from Halicarnassus {IBM 994). 

5 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 60. 6 Josephus, AJ 15, 268ff. 

7 Livy, Per . 139. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF OPINION 475 

of land and birth is firmly riveted to the clientela of Caesar 
Augustus and the dynasty in the first place, and through the 
dynasty to Rome and the Empire . 1 The institution would further 
inspire among the Gauls just so much community of sentiment as 
would serve the convenience of Rome without creating a dangerous 
nationalism. It was a neat calculation. 

The different forms which the worship of Augustus took in 
Rome, Italy and the provinces illustrate the different aspects of 
his rule—he is Princeps to the Senate, Imperator to army and 
people, King and God to the subject peoples of the Empire—and 
recapitulate the sources of his personal power in relation to 
towns, provinces and kings. The sum of power and prestige was 
tremendous. Who could have ventured to compete or oppose ? 

1 For examples of these men, ILS 7013 ff. 'The first high priest was C. Julius 
Yercondaridubnus, an Aeduan noble (Eivy, Per. \y)). Note, as fighting for Rome 
in 10 B.c., Chumslinctus and Avectius, described as ‘tribum ex enitate Ner- 
\ jorum’ (ib , 141). 



XXXI. THE OPPOSITION 


T HE army had made one emperor and could make another; 

and the change from Republic to Empire might be described 
as the provinces’ revenge upon Rome. Army and provinces stood 
firm for the established order. The legions were inspired with a 
fanatical yet rational devotion to the person of Augustus and to 
the house of Caesar. No less comprehensible was the loyalty of 
the provinces—or rather of the propertied classes which the 
Empire preserved and supported all over the world, whether in 
the cities of Asia or the country districts of Gaul and Galatia. 
National memories were not strong in the western lands: in the 
East the fact that the Principate was a monarchy guaranteed its 
ready acceptance. The lower classes had no voice in government, 
no place in history. In town or country there was poverty and 
social unrest—but Rome could not be held directly responsible 
for the transgressions of the wealthy. Rome seldom intervened 
against the local dynasts. C. Julius Eurvcles, the lord of Sparta 
and greatest man in all Greece, must have proved very unsatis¬ 
factory, for he was deposed by Augustus and subsequently 
banished . 1 

Kings and tetrarchs ruled for Rome and for Caesar Augustus, 
guarding the frontiers of empire in Africa, the Balkans and the 
East, suppressing brigandage, founding cities and promoting 
ordered life. Juba, the King of Mauretania, a man of peace and 
letters, enjoyed long rule, though not undisturbed by the nomad 
Gaetulians. The kings of Thrace were more often engaged in 
active warfare; and the vigorous Amyntas was killed when at¬ 
tempting to extirpate the I lomonadenses. The private vices and 
domestic scandals of Herod the Great did not shake Augustus’ 
confidence in the efficiency of his government. Herod’s death 
showed his value—it was followed by a rising which Varus the 
governor of Syria put down. Ten years later, when Archelaus the 
ethnarch was deposed, Augustus decided to annex Judaea. Qui- 
rinius, the legate of Syria, and the procurator Coponius proceeded 
to carry out the first census, provoking the insurrection of Judas 
the Galilaean. Rome’s rule was hated still, for good reasons. In 
Gaul, where the freedman Licinus extorted huge revenues for 

1 Josephu9, AJ 16, 310. Eurycles owned the whole island of Cythera as his 
private property (Strabo, p. 363). 



THE OPPOSITION 477 

Augustus, the introduction of a regular assessment (13-12 B.c.) 
provoked local disturbances. 1 

The proconsuls and piiblicaiii of the Republic took a heavy toll 
from the provinces. The Empire supervened to curb its agents 
and to render the process of exploitation more tolerable, more 
regular and more productive. The publicani were superseded or 
reduced. That did not mean an end of oppression and injustice. 
The vices and cruelties of the legate Carisius are said to have 
caused a rising in Spain. 2 He was dealing with Asturians, a suffi¬ 
cient excuse. An insurgent leader of the Dalmatians invoked in 
palliation the rapacity of Roman fiscal methods; 3 but the Dal¬ 
matians and Pannonians, incompletely conquered twenty years 
before, would have risen again at the earliest opportunity when 
Roman armies were absent. Other subject peoples could show 
more authentic grievances. 

Augustus intended to keep firm control over provincial gover¬ 
nors. He tightened the legal procedure for dealing with cases of 
extortion. Moreover, the provincials through their concilia pos¬ 
sessed an organ for voicing complaints about their rulers or 
making representations to the Princeps. How far they deemed it 
safe or expedient to exert their rights, if such they were, is another 
question. The rule of Rome in the Empire represented no mira¬ 
culous conversion from a brutal and corrupt Republic to an ideal 
dispensation of justice and benevolence. Few trials of offending 
governors are recorded in the time of Augustus: one of them 
reveals what Asia had to suffer from a murderous proconsul. 4 
Lack, of prosecutors does not prove a lack of criminals. It took 
courage to assail openly the leading men in the State; and 
Augustus will have preferred to condone the vices or the rapacity 
of his friends rather than expose or surrender the principal 
ministers of the government. The pearls of Lollia Paullina had 
a notorious origin. 5 Lollius’ disgrace was due to a political error 
of calculation, not to any defect of personal integrity. 

Yet on the whole the provinces were contented enough, for 
they had known worse, and could see no prospect of a successful 
war for liberty against the legions and colonies of Rome. In 
origin, the Roman colony was a military station. In Italy garrisons 

1 Livy, Per . 138, cf. Dio 54, 32, 1. 

2 Hio 54,5, 1. 

3 lb. 56, 16, 3. 

4 Seneca, De ira 2, 5, 5 (an allegation that L. Valerius Messalla Volesus, pro- 
consul of Asia c . a.d. 11, had executed three hundred persons in one day). 

s Pliny, TV// 9, 117 f. 



478 THE OPPOSITION 

of the government, in the provinces the colonies were outposts 
of the ruling people, fractions of the army placed at strategic 
positions and capable of supplying troops to replace or supple¬ 
ment the legions: the colonist remembered with pride his ties 
with the army and with the Roman People . 1 Hence the veterans 
and the local dynasts would sharply have dealt with social dis¬ 
content or the propagation of unsound opinions. Certain of the 
towns of Italy and the West took pride in their Republican tradi¬ 
tions. On the whole, a harmless practice. Yet Meuiolanium did 
not forget Brutus and Cassius ; 2 Corduba produced a disloyalist;* 
while Patavium and Auximum harboured conspirators among 
their citizens . 4 

Like the army, the plebs of Rome supported the monarchy. 
Though purged of evil habits and solaced bv generous subsidies, 
the populace might still assert for itself the right of free speech, 
as no order else in the New State. They demonstrated against 
the moral code and later clamoured loudly that Julia should be 
restored from exile . 5 Too prudent or too grateful to attack 
Augustus, the plebs could visit their disfavour on the more un¬ 
popular of his partisans. M. Titius owed benefits to the house 
of Pompeius. He had made an ill requital. The Pompeii were 
dead, but Titius lived on, in wealth and power. The town of 
Auximum in Picenum had once honoured Pompeius Magnus as 
its patron/’ Now Titius usurped that position . 7 Auximum could 
do nothing—but the Roman plebs remembered. When Titius 
presided at games held in the Theatre of Pompeius the people 
arose in indignation and drove him forth . 8 Many years later that 
edifice witnessed a similar spectacle. Aemilia Lepida, a woman of 
high birth and abandoned habits, organized a procession of 
society ladies in protest against Quirinius, her former husband. 
The spectators responded lovally, with loud cursing of the de¬ 
testable upstart P 

Augustus, the patronus of the plebs, could answer for their 
good behaviour. Disturbances broke out during his absence in 
the East—a salutary reminder to the Senate. It was only from 

1 The men of Lu^dunum describe themselves as ‘coloniam Romanam et partem 
exercitus’ (Tacitus, Hist, i, 65). Varus pot fifteen hundred men from the colony 
of Berytus in 4 B.c. (Josephus, AJ 17, 287). 

2 Plutarch, Comp. Dionis et Bruti 5; Suetonius, De rhet. 6. 

3 Suetonius, Dims Aug. 51, 2. 

4 Cassius of Patavium, Suetonius, Divus Aug. 51,1; Plautius Rufus (ib. 19, 1, 

cf. Dio 55, 27, 2) is probably a man of Auximum, CJL IX, 5834 ( — ILS 926); 
6384. 5 Dio 55, 13, 1. 6 ILS 877. 

7 C 1 L IX, 5853. H Velleius 2, 79, 5. g Tacitus, Arm. 3, 22 f. 



THE OPPOSITION 479 

members of that body that serious opposition to the new regime 
was at all likely to come—and then not from the majority. The 
new men were contented, the most independent of the nobiles had 
perished. On a superficial view the domestic history of the 
Augustan Principate seems to attest inevitable and unbroken 
peace. There was another side to it—‘pacem sine dubio post 
haec, vero cruentam’. 1 The life of the Princeps was threatened 
by continual conspiracies—though these plots may not have been 
either as frequent or as dangerous as the government affected to 
believe and discover.- There was a graver danger than the dagger 
of a casual assassin, whether he might be a misguided man of the 
people or a vindictive noble—a split in the party itself and dis¬ 
sension between its leaders. The crisis of 23 b.c., the secession 
of Tiberius and the mysterious intrigue for which Julia was 
banished and Iullus Antonius killed—these were all events that 
threatened the dynasty at its heart and core and compromised the 
existence of the new order. A government may invent conspira¬ 
cies for its own ends: if it cannot entirely suppress the evidence 
of its own internal crises, it falsifies the symptoms. Most of the 
real history of the Principate is secret history. 

The nobiles were unable or unwilling to overthrow the New 
State that had been built up at their expense. They had no 
illusions about it—and they remembered Philippi, with melan¬ 
choly pride, as the greatest calamity in Roman history. Officially, 
there prevailed a conspiracy of silence about the victims of civil war 
and proscriptions, except for such as could usefully be revived to 
adorn legend or consecrate the government. Caesar was saddled 
with the whole guilt of the Civil Wars, Antonius and Lepidus 
with the ultimate responsibility for the proscriptions and the most 
abominable actions of the Triumvirs. The people might be fooled 
and fed, the knights persuaded to disguise greea and gain under 
the fair cloak of loyalty and patriotism. The aristocracy knew 
the truth and suffered in bitter impotence, not least when they 
derived profit and advancement from the present order. 

For the sake of peace, the Principate had to be. That was admit¬ 
ted. But was Augustus the ideal Princeps? 3 That might be doubted. 
The person and habits of Augustus were no less detestable than 
his rule. Of his morals, the traditional stories of variegated vice 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 10. 

2 According to Suetonius ( Divus Aug. 19, 1) they were usually discovered before 
they had gone very far. 

3 This is the argument in Tacitus, Ann. 1, 10—not against the Principate but 
against the Princeps. 



480 THE OPPOSITION 

were freely circulated and no doubt widely believed: they belong 
to a category of literary material that commonly defies historical 
criticism. To turn from the scandalous to the ridiculous, it will 
be observed that the Princeps was by no means as majestic and 
martial in appearance as his effigies show him forth . 1 His limbs 
were well proportioned, but his stature was short, a defect which 
he sought to repair by wearing high heels. Nor were all his 
features prepossessing—he had bad teeth and sandy hair. After 
the end of the Civil Wars he lived as a valetudinarian, abandoning 
bodily exercise and bathing rarely: he could not stand the sun, 
even in winter, in which season he would wear no fewer than four 
under-shirts, not to mention puttees round his legs. It may be 
added that the garments of the First Citizen were uniformly and 
ostentatiously homespun. 

As with Pompeius, face and mien might be honest and comely . 2 
What lay behind the mask ? The cardinal virtues of the Princeps, 
so studiously celebrated in public, must have been privately can¬ 
vassed and derided as offensive when they were not palpably 
fraudulent. His personal courage was not above reproach. With 
all allowance made for hostile propaganda, it will have to be 
conceded, at the very least, that his native caution was happily 
seconded by fortune when the soldiers of Brutus broke into the 
camp and tent of the Caesarian leader at Philippi: he was not 
there. After the example set by Caesar the Dictator, clemency 
became a commodity widely advertised by his successors, but 
by no means widely distributed. Augustus alleged that in the 
Civil Wars he had put to death no citizen of his enemies’ armies 
who had asked that his life be spared . 3 The claim was impudent: 
it is refuted by one of his own historians who, praising the 
‘lenitas ducis’ after Actium, exclaims that he would have behaved 
precisely so in earlier wars, had it been possible . 4 As for Actium, 
men might remember the killing of young Curio; and the very 
denial of Canidius’ constancy in the last emergency, if believed., 
would reveal one man at least who was killed though begging for 
life . 5 It was a commonplace of antiquity that Princeps was more 
clement than Dux. Some dismissed it as ‘lassa crudelitas ’. 6 
Though there were notorious instances of mercy, as when Cinna 
was pardoned after a not very well authenticated conspiracy, the 

1 On his appearance and habits, see the full details in Suetonius, Divus Aug. 
79ff \ 

2 Sallust, Hist. 2 , 16 m: ‘oris probi, animo inverecundo.’ 

3 Res Gestae 3. 4 Velleius 2, 86, 2. 5 Velleius 2, 87, 3. 

6 Seneca, Dc clem. 1, 11,2; Statius, Silvae 4, 1, 32: ‘sed coepit sero mereri. > 



THE OPPOSITION 481 

Principate could also show its judicial murders or deaths self- 
inflicted by state criminals, conscious of guilt or evading capture. 1 

Pietas justified the prosecution and hounding to death of 
the assassins of Caesar. It was no doubt recalled that Caesar’s 
heir had been willing, for the ends of political ambition, to waive 
that solemn duty in the autumn of 44 b.c. when he made a pact 
with Pompeians; and when uniting with Antonius at Brundisium 
he had condoned the return of one of the assassins, Cn. Domitius 
Ahenobarbus. Nor, on the other hand, had he refused to pro¬ 
scribe Cicero, an ally and benefactor. The plea and battle-cry of 
pietas was resumed when convenient. As for the fourth of the 
cardinal virtues, justice, it was necessary to say much about that. 
Less advertised by the government, but no less distasteful to the 
nobiles , were the domestic parsimony and petty superstitions 
which the Princeps had imported from his municipal origin. 

The person and character of Augustus and of his friends pro¬ 
vided rich material for gossip, for the revival of old scandals and 
the invention of new enormities. Strained relations between the 
principal members of the government were eagerly detected or 
surmised. As the most important decisions were taken in private 
and known to few, speculation about high politics ran rife in the 
clubs and salons of the aristocracy, becoming wilder with the 
years, as despotism grew more secretive and more repressive. 
‘Prohibit! per civitatem sermones eoque plures.’ 2 Official truth 
begot disbelief and its own corrective; and so rumour assumed 
an epic part, many-tongued, inventing new forms and categories 
for itself. The dissemination of canards was elevated into a fine 
art, and desperate wits preferred to risk their heads rather than 
forego a jest. 3 

For Augustus it was inexpedient to suppress any activity that 
could do him no harm. Tiberius was alarmed at the frequency of 
libellous publications, but Augustus reassured him, pointing to 
the real impotence of their enemies. 4 The strength of Augustus’ 
position when Princeps enabled him to permit freedom of speech 
as well as to dispense with the most excessive and intolerable 
forms of propaganda. Though the realities of power were veiled, 
none the less senators had an opportunity in the Curia or in the 
law courts to utter sentiments or no little frankness and vigour. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1, 10: ‘interfectos Romae Varroncs Egnatios Iullos/ 

2 lb., Hist, 3, 54 - 

3 Seneca, Controv. 2, 4, 13 : ‘caput potius quam dictum perdere.* 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 51, 3: ‘satis est enim si hoc habemus ne quis nobis 
male facere possit/ 



482 THE OPPOSITION 

These outbursts of liberty flattered their authors without alarm¬ 
ing the government; and men might still read without danger the 
opprobrious epistles of Antonius or the violent orations of Marcus 
Brutus. 1 

The distinguished ex-Republican Valerius Messalla gave him¬ 
self airs of independence. In 26 b.c. he had laid down the office 
of praefectus urbi almost at once; and it was his habit to boast 
openly that he had always followed the better cause in politics. 2 
As he had been among the earliest of the nobiles who fought at 
Philippi to pass from Antonius to Octavianus, the statement is 
not as daring as it might appear, but is rather a subtle compli¬ 
ment. It was Messalla who proposed in the Senate, with moving 
and patriotic language, that Augustus should be hailed as pater 
patriae (2 B.c.). 

Pollio, however, did not suffer himself thus to be captured by 
the government. This austere and embittered champion of Liber- 
tas y passionate and ferocious, defended his ideals in the only 
fashion he could, by freedom of speech. 3 Too eminent to be 
muzzled without scandal, too recalcitrant to be won by flattery, 
Pollio had acquired for himself a privileged position. In the Senate 
he once launched a savage attack upon the patriotic gymnastics in 
which one of his grandsons had broken a leg. 4 

The great jurist M. Antistius Labeo, whose father, one of the 
assassins of the Dictator, had committed suicide after Philippi, 
also preserved the traditions of libertas and ferocia. When the 
roll of the Senate was being revised in 18 B.c., Labeo put forward 
the name of the relegated Triumvir Lepidus. Questioned by 
Augustus, Labeo stood his ground and carried his point—Lepi¬ 
dus was included, but enrolled last on the list of the consulars. 5 
Labeo, it is also recorded, brought to ridicule a proposal that a 
bodyguard of senators should keep watch outside the bed-cham¬ 
ber of the Princeps by mentioning his own manifest unsuitability 
for such an honour. 0 Of the pre-eminence of Labeo in legal 
scholarship there was no doubt: he spent one half of the year 
instructing his pupils, the other in writing books. 7 His freedom 
of speech cost him promotion—he did not rise above the praetor- 
ship. Augustus gave the consulate to his rival, Ateius Capito, the 
grandson of a Sullan centurion and a subservient character. The 

1 T acitus, Ann. 4, 34, cf. Ovid, Ex Ponto 1, 1, 23 f. 2 Plutarch, Brutus 53. 

3 Pliny (NH 36, 33) speaks of his ‘acris vehementia.’ Note also Seneca, Controv. 
4, praef. 3: ‘illud strictum eius et asperum et nimis iratum ingenio suo iudicium.’ 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 43, 2. 5 Dio 54, 15, 7. 

6 lb. 8—because he snored. 7 Dig. 1, 2, 2, 47. 



THE OPPOSITION 483 

politician prospered: the scholarly Labeo continued to enjoy the 
better reputation. 1 

The law courts could still provide scope for oratory, ambition 
and political intrigue. Augustus was invulnerable. Not so his 
friends: a trial might be the occasion either of a direct attack 
upon their persons or for occasional and apparently spontaneous 
criticism of the whole government. The major scandals, it is true,, 
did not always come before the courts; but politics are probably 
at the bottom of a number of recorded causes celebres . L. Nonius 
Asprenas, the brother-in-law of P. Quinctilius Varus and a friend 
of Augustus, was arraigned on a charge of poisoning, attacked by 
Cassius Severus, defended by Pollio and rescued through the 
personal intervention of Augustus, who came to the court and sat 
there. 2 He did not need to make a speech. Such was auctoritas. 
Maecenas and Sex. Appuleius (a relative of the Princeps) hap¬ 
pened to be defending a man prosecuted for adultery. They were 
roughly handled by the prosecution. Augustus intervened on 
their side, with salutary rebuke of their enemies. 3 Augustus did 
not forget his friends and allies: he was able to preserve from 
justice a certain Castricius who had given him information about 
the conspiracy of Murena. 4 

Political oratory starved and dwindled in both law courts and 
Senate; from the assemblies of the People, the function of which 
was now to ratify the decisions of the Princeps in legislation or to 
accept his candidates for office, it was virtually excluded. Already 
in the Triumviral period Pollio was quick to draw the moral of 
the times, intelligent to anticipate the future. He did not intend 
that his retirement from politics should be either inglorious or 
silent: he introduced the practice of holding recitations, though 
to friends only and not to an indiscriminate public. 5 The fashion 
quickly spread and propagated a disease among literature in both 
prose and verse, a scourge in the social life of the aristocracy. 
Messalla vied with Pollio as a patron of letters. When a mediocre 
poet from Corduba delivered in his house a lame panegyric of 
Cicero, 

deflendus Cicero est Latiaeque silentia linguae, 
the resentful Pollio rose and walked out. 6 

1 Tacitus, Atm. 3, 75: ‘sed Labeo incorrupta libertate et ob id fama celebratior, 
Capitonis obsequium dominantibus magis probabatur.’ 

2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 56, 3; Quintilian 10, 1, 22. 

3 Dio 54, 30, 4. 4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 56, 4. 

5 Seneca, Control? . 4 f praef. z. h Seneca, Suas. 6, 27. 



484 THE OPPOSITION 

Pollio professed to find little to his taste in the New State. 
Pollio was himself both a historian and an orator; and in history 
he was critical as well as creative. Sallustius had died at his task, 
carrying his Historiac no farther than the year 67 B.c. Pollio, 
however, set himself to describe the fall of the Republic from the 
compact of Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar to the Battle of Philippi. 
Of earlier historians, he blamed Sallustius for his style and 
questioned the veracity of Caesar; in his contemporaries, especi¬ 
ally when they dealt with the period of which he had personal 
experience, he must have found much to criticize. Certain poli¬ 
ticians had not delayed to produce their memoirs: it may be 
presumed that they were not alarmingly outspoken about the 
career of the Caesarian leader in the revolutionary wars. Messalla 
praised Brutus and Cassius; 1 but he reprehended Antonius in 
justification of his own adhesion to the better cause. Q. Dellius 
described the eastern campaigns of Antonius in which he had 
participated ; 2 the disasters of Antonius will not have been under¬ 
estimated. Even Agrippa took up the pen. 3 Paramount in the 
literature of apology stood Augustus’ own autobiographical 
memoir, recording his destiny, his struggles and his triumph—a 
masterly exercise on the august theme of ‘tantae molis erat’. 

It is to be regretted that Pollio’s comments upon this interest¬ 
ing document have not been preserved. Of the style at least he 
will have approved, if it recalled the unpretentious simplicity of 
the Princeps’ recorded utterances or the ‘imperatoria brevitas’ 
of the Res Gestae. Augustus detested alike the splendid and 
pompous oratory of M. Antonius, the fantastical conceits of 
Maecenas and the perverse archaism of Tiberius. In writing, his 
first care was to express his meaning as clearly as possible. 4 In 
these matters Pollio’s own taste and practice is well attested. The 
words, he said, must follow the sense. 5 Augustus and Pollio were 
crisp, hard, unsentimental men. Augustus might permit the cult 
of Cicero—for his own purposes. Yet it may be that his real 
opinion of the character, policy and style of Cicero was not so far 
from that of Pollio. Pollio’s native distrust of fine words was 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 34. 

2 Plutarch, Antonius 59; Strabo, p. 52V 

3 Pliny, TV//7, 148. 

4 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 86, 1 : ‘genus eloquendi secutus est elegans et tempera- 
turn, vitatis sententiarum ineptiis atque concinnitate et reconditorum verborum, 
ut ipse dicit, fetoribus; praecipuamque curam duxit sensum animi quam apertis- 
sime exprimere.’ 

5 Porphyrin on Horace, Ars poetica 311 : ‘male herculc eveniat verbis, nisi rem 
sequuntur.’ 



THE OPPOSITION 485 

intensified by loathing of the exuberant insincerity of public ora¬ 
tory—and by the wars of the Revolution, which stripped away 
shams and revealed the naked realities of politics. It is in no way 
surprising that Pollio, like Stendhal, became the fanatical exponent 
of a hard, dry and unemotional fashion of writing. ‘Durus et 
siccus 1 , he was well described: 1 he seemed a century earlier than 
his own time. A plain, solid style recalled the earliest annalists 
of Rome; and archaism was a consistent and laudable feature of 
Roman historiography. 

Like Sallustius, Pollio imitated the gravity and concentration 
of Thucydides as well as the native virtues of Roman writers. 
Like Sallustius, too, he turned with distaste from the wars and 
politics of his time and became a historian. Both writers had 
practical experience of affairs; and it will be a fair inference that 
Pollio, the eminent consular, like the senator Tacitus more than 
a century later, was scornful of the academic historian. 2 Livy had 
come to history from the study of rhetoric. That was not the 
only defect that Pollio could discover in Livy. 

Pollio, so it is recorded by Quintilian, criticized Livy for 
‘Patavinitas’. 3 It is by no means certain that Quintilian himself 
understood the point of the attack: the most various of interpre¬ 
tations have been advanced. ‘Patavinitas’ has been held to be a 
characteristic of the literary style of Livy in the narrower sense, 
or even of the dialect and spelling of his native city. One thing 
is evident, however: the nature of ‘Patavinitas’ cannot be dis¬ 
covered from Livy’s writings alone, without reference to the 
character of his critic Pollio and of Pollio’s theories about the 
style, substance and treatment appropriate to the writing of 
history. Pollio, w r ho came from a poor and infertile region of 
Italy, knew r what Patavium w r as—a city notorious for material 
prosperity and for moral worth. 4 A critic armed with the acerbity 
of Pollio must have delivered a more crushing verdict upon a 
historian from Patavium than the obvious and trivial comment 
that his speech showed traces of his native dialect. Pollio him¬ 
self may have had a local accent. Nor was the judgement merely 
one of style, as though a Roman of Rome, infallible arbiter of 
urban purity, mocked and showed up the provincial. Pollio, an 
Italian from the land of the Marrucini, was provincial himself, 
in a sense. The original sin of Livy is darker and more detestable. 

1 Tacitus, Dial . 21, 7. 2 Hist. 1, 1 : ‘inscitia rei publicac ut alienac.* 

3 Quintilian 1, 5, 56; 8, 1, 3. 

4 Strabo, p. 213; Pliny, Epp. 1, 14, 6; Martial ii, 16, 8. Cf. also above, p. 464. 



486 TIIE OPPOSITION 

The word ‘Patavinitas’ sums up, elegantly and finally, the whole 
moral and romantic view of history. 1 Pollio knew what history 
was. It was not like Livy. 

Augustus’ historian of imperial Rome employed for his theme 
an ample Ciceronian style, strengthened by a Sallustian and 
poetical infusion: a rich concoction. The writers and speakers of 
the opposition were not confined to a jejune archaism or a bare 
Attic simplicity: a new style developed, with brief, ferocious 
sentences, pointed, rhetorical and ornate. The most conspicuous 
exponents of the movement were T. Labienus and Cassius 
Severus, neither of whom possessed the social and material ad¬ 
vantages that rendered Pollio secure from reprisals as well as 
formidable in attack. Labienus came of a loyal Pompeian family 
reduced in circumstances: he lived in poverty and disrepute, 
hating and hated. 2 Labienus vented his rancour on class and 
individual without discrimination and without fear. Bathyllus, 
the popular and disreputable actor, a favourite of Maecenas, was 
an easy target. The more eminent were not immune. He even 
criticized Pollio. 3 Labienus also wrote history. When reciting his 
works, he would ostentatiously omit certain passages, explaining 
that they would be read after his death. 4 

The last years of Augustus witnessed stern measures of re¬ 
pression against noxious literature. 5 Public bonfires were 
instituted—but not for such trifles as the Ars amatoria of Ovid. 
Contemporary political literature provided the cause—and the 
fuel. Thus did Augustus have his revenge, imitating the Greek 
Timagenes, who, quarrelling with his patron and falling from 
favour, had boldly consigned to the flames an adulatory history 
which he had formerly composed in honour of the Princeps. 6 
Labienus’ writings were officially condemned and publicly 
burned. That did not matter, said Cassius Severus, who had them 
all by heart. 7 But Cassius did not go unscathed. This man, an 
able and vigorous orator of obscure origin, resembling a gladiator 
in appearance, 8 was hated and feared for his bitter tongue and 
incorrigible love of independence. Cassius prosecuted Augustus’ 

1 The Transatlantic term ‘uplift’ might give a hint of the meaning. 

2 For particulars, cf. Seneca, Controv. io, praef .4 ft.: ‘summa egestas erat, summa 
infamia, summum odium.’ He was called ‘Rabienus’. 

1 Seneca, Controv. 4, praef. 2 (a remark about ‘ille triumphalis senex’). 

4 lb. 10, praef. 8. 5 Dio 56, 27, 1. 

6 Seneca, De ira 3, 23, 4ff. Pollio harboured him when he was expelled from 
Augustus’ house. 

7 Seneca, Controv. io, praef. 8. 

8 Pliny, NH 7, 55; 7 'acitus, Ann. 4, 21: ‘sordidae originis, maleficae vitae. 



THE OPPOSITION 487 

friend Nonius Asprenas on a charge of poisoning. His activities 
were not confined to the courts—he composed libellous pamph¬ 
lets, assailing illustrious persons of both sexes, without restraint 
or distinction, among them P. Vitellius the procurator, whose 
grandfather, he said, was a cobbler, his mother a baker’s daughter 
turned prostitute. 1 

It was Cassius who defined for all time the character and 
capacity of Paullus Fabius Maximus. 2 But Cassius was vulner¬ 
able and widely hated. Augustus ordered an inquiry under the 
law of maiestas. Fabius prosecuted. The offender was condemned 
and banished to the island of Crete (a.d. 12 ?). 3 Even there he was 
a nuisance: twelve years later they removed him to the barren 
rock of Seriphus. 4 

Not so dangerous as Labienus and Cassius, or possessing 
fewer enemies, the Republican historian A. Cremutius Cordus, 
whose vivid pages proscribed to all eternity the authors of the 
proscriptions, 5 survived the Principate of Augustus. He was 
prosecuted under Tiberius by a client of Seianus. Cremutius 
anticipated conviction by suicide, after a noble speech defending 
history against oppression and despotism. 6 His works were con¬ 
demned and burnt. 

Augustus was able to prevent his domination from being 
stamped as the open enemy of freedom and truth. But not for 
long. Coerced through official repression, or tainted by servility, 
history soon decayed and perished. ‘Magna ilia ingenia cessere.’ 7 
Not history only, but poetry and eloquence also, now that Libertas 
was no more. The Principate inherited genius from the Trium- 
viral period and claimed it for its own: it could not produce a new 
crop. The generation that grew to manhood in the happy prime 
of the restored Republic makes a poor enough showing, with 
Ovid to sustain the splendour and dignity of poetry. Nor could 
the new oratory outshine the fame of Messalla and Pollio; and 
its ablest exponents were bitter enemies of the government. 

1 Suetonius, Vitellius 2, 1. 

2 Seneca, Controv . 2, 4, 11: ‘quasi disertus es, quasi formosus es, quasi dives es; 
unum tan turn es non quasi, vappa.’ 

3 Tacitus, Ann. i, 72, cf. Dio 56, 27, 1. 4 Ann. 4, 21. 

5 Seneca, Ad Marciam dc consolatione 26, 1: ‘civilia bella deflevit . . . proscri- 

bentis in aeternurn ipse proscripsit.’ 6 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 34f. 

7 lb., Hist . i f i. This is assigned as a direct result of the Battle of Actium. In 
Ann, i,i, however, Tacitus is more conciliatory—‘temporibusque Augusti dicendis 
non defuere decora ingenia donee gliscente adulatione deterrerentur.’ Compare 

also the elder Seneca on the burnings of books ( Controv. 10, praef. 7): ‘di melius, 
quod eo saeculo ista ingeniorum supplicia coeperunt quo ingenia desierantl’ 



488 , THE OPPOSITION 

It was impossible to tell the truth about the living, but hate 
might have its revenge upon the dead. Hence the contrasted but 
complementary vices inherent in imperial Roman historiography, 
flattery and detraction . 1 Horace assured Augustus that the envy 
incurred by the great ones of earth in their lifetime is silenced in 
death, being converted into recognition and love: 

exstinctus amabitur idem . 2 

This moral platitude became a wild paradox under the Empire. 
Augustus' memory might be safe after death—to attack or tra¬ 
duce the Founder was an offence against the State. Not all 
emperors, however, were succeeded by rulers who had an interest 
in the deification of their own predecessors. Death or disgrace 
delivered up members of the dynasty or partisans of the govern¬ 
ment to retribution at last: 

curramus praecipites et, 
dum iacet in ripa, calcemus Caesaris hostem . 3 

Velleius, a typical government writer, is unswervingly loyal to 
Tiberius and to L. Aelius Seianus, the chief minister of state. 
The variations of the technique are curious and instructive. Not 
enough to celebrate in fulsome language the ‘inenarrabilis pietas’ 
and ‘caelestissima opera’ of the Princeps or the varied virtues of 
the unassuming and indispensable Seianus : 4 his whole account 
of the reign of Augustus is artfully coloured by devotion to 
Tiberius, with vituperation of enemies and rivals. The horror 
and indignation with which this worthy citizen recounts certain 
court scandals is matched by his depreciation of the generals of 
Augustus who encroached upon Tiberius’ monopoly of military 
glory, whether personal enemies of Tiberius or not. Lollius is 
a monster of rapacity and intrigue, Varus mild-mannered but 
corrupt and incompetent. The campaigns of Quirinius and 
Ahenobarbus were simply left out altogether. Vinicius could 
not decently be omitted: the praise of his military achievements 
is cool and temperate . 5 

Velleius delights in the language of laudation, or, as he calls it, 

‘ iustus sine mendacio candor’ . 6 It is lavishly bestowed upon social 

1 Tacitus, Hist, i, i: ‘ita neutris cura posteritatis inter infensos vel obnoxios/ 

2 Epp. 2, i, 14. 

3 Juvenal 10, 85 f. 

4 Velleius 2, 127, 3: ‘virum severitatis laetissimae, hilaritatis priscae, actu otiosis 
simillimum, nihil sibi vindicantem eoque adsequentem omnia, semperque infra 
aliorum aestimationes se metientem, vultu vitaque tranquillum, animo exsomnem.’ 

5 lb. 2, 104, 2. 6 lb. 2, 116, 4. 



THE OPPOSITION 489 

distinction or political success. Velleius stands revealed in his 
literary judgements as well. Next to Virgil he names among 
epic poets the grandiloquent Rabirius who had written about 
the War of Actium . 1 Governments change and careerists make 
mistakes. Seianusfell. The historian may have been involved in 
his ruin. 

With the accession of Caligula, the enemies of Augustus and of 
Tiberius enjoyed a brief and illusory consolation. Caligula, the 
great-grandson of M. Antonius, disguising native malignity or a 
sense of humour under the garb of piety to his ancestors, en¬ 
couraged an Antonian and Republican revival. The condemned 
works of Cordus, Severus and Labienus returned to public circu¬ 
lation ; 2 and it was alleged that the Princeps proposed to banish 
the writings of Virgil and Livy from the public libraries . 3 

The rule of Caligula brought no freedom, no benefit to history: 
it merely poisoned the sources again. Literature under the Em¬ 
pire was constrained to veiled criticism or delayed revenge upon 
the enemies of the government. Satire valiantly attacked the dead 
and the helpless. Quintilian, a professor of rhetoric, claimed that 
this form of composition was peculiarly and wholly Roman. He 
did not live to see his verdict confirmed by Juvenal and by Tacitus, 
the typical glories of imperial literature—and the last of the 
Romans. 

1 Velleius 2, 36, 3; ‘inter quae maxime nostri aevi eminent princeps carminum 
Vergilius Rabiriusque.’ 

~ Suetonius, Caligula 16, 1. 

1 lb. 34. 2 . 



XXXII. THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 


‘OTEMMATA quid faciunt ?’ 1 The satirist Juvenal makes 
O mock of pedigrees. Not, however, with all the fierce, free 
invective of a robust democrat. Juvenal derives his names and 
examples from the descendants of the Republican nobility—but 
not the living. Few of them, indeed, survived in Juvenal’s day, 
and they mattered not at all. The Empire had broken their 
power and their spirit. The satirist did not dare to deride the 
new nobility, the oligarchy of government in his own day. He 
makes mock of the needy Greek of low degree, clever, mendacious 
and unscrupulous . 2 A traditional and literary figure. Very dif¬ 
ferent the proud sons of the great priestly and dynastic houses of 
Asia, now holding consular rank in the imperial Senate. Still less 
does he venture to attack the opulent provincial families issuing 
from Spain and Narbonensis. They were now dominant in the 
social and political hierarchy of the Empire, they wore the purple 
of the Caesars. 

Juvenal’s poem is not so much a panegyric of plebeian merit 
as a lament for the decline of aristocratic virtus. Tacitus, a 
knight’s son from Italia Transpadana or from the province of 
Gallia Narbonensis, recaptures in his writings the spirit, the pre¬ 
judices and the resentment of the Roman aristocracy and reveals 
the causes and tragedy of their decadence. The nobiles have not 
spoken themselves. They have left no personal and authentic 
record to show what they thought of the Principate of Augustus. 
They were preserved, pampered and subsidized by the New 
State; but they were the survivors of a catastrophe, doomed to 
slow and inexorable extinction. The better cause and the best 
men, the brave and the loyal, had perished. Not a mere faction 
of the nobility had been defeated, but a whole class. The contest 
had been not merely political but social. Sulla, Pompeius and 
Caesar were all more than mere faction-leaders; yet the personal 
domination of those dynasts never meant so drastic a depression 
of the nobiles , They were now confronted by an organized party 
and an organized system of government. 

The nobiles lost power and wealth, display, dignity and honour. 
Bad men, brutal, rapacious and intolerable, entered into the 


1 Juvenal 8, i. 


2 lb. 3, 6o ft. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 491 

possessions of the dead and usurped privilege and station of the 
Jiving—Vedius Pollio with his fish-ponds, Maecenas in princely 
gardens, Titius and Quirinius acquiring brides from patrician 
families, Taurus flaunting in the city of Rome a bodyguard of 
Germans like the Princeps himself, Agrippa the solid and con¬ 
spicuous monument of military despotism. For the nobiles , no 
more triumphs after war, no more roads, temples and towns 
named in their honour and commemorating the glory of the great 
houses that were the Republic and Rome. 

The faction-wars of Marius and Sulla had been a punishment 
and a warning. In the brief respite between the Dictatorships 
the old families, especially the patricians, marshalled their re¬ 
sources and tightened their alliances. Thus did Scrvilia work for 
her family, capturing the Aemilian connexkm. Rut alliances be¬ 
got feuds, and the nobiles were involved in the struggles of the 
dynasts. For many of them it had been hard enough to preserve 
and perpetuate the glory of their state in times of civil peace. 
The Revolution made an end to many noble families old and 
recent. 

The dominant figures of the monarchic dynasts, Sulla, Pom- 
peius and Caesar, engross the stage of history, imposing their 
names, as families had done in happier days, upon a period or a 
government. In the background lurk their allies or their rivals, 
certain great houses or permanent factions. The Scipiones had 
been an age of history. Their power had passed to the Metelli. 
Both houses waned before the Julii and their allies. The Metelli 
had backed Sulla: they made a final bid for power when, with the 
Scipionic connexion, they supported Pompeius. The last in the 
direct line of the Metelli, an ex-Antonian, did not reach the con¬ 
sulate; and the last consular bearer of the name was a Junius 
Silanus by birth. Likewise to the Principate of Augustus belongs 
the last consul of the ancient patrician house of the Scipiones. 
Their name and their mausoleum passed to another branch of 
the patrician Cornelii, the Lentuli, who had also decided for 
Pompeius against Caesar, but were more fortunate in duration . 1 
The plebeian Claudii Marcelli were also among the group of 
consular families that supported Pompeius. Their main line 
lapsed with Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus, but the name 
supplied one collateral consul then, M, Claudius Marcellus 
Aeserninus, consul in 22 B.c., a not very distinguished partisan 
ot Caesar the Dictator. 

1 On their burial-place, cf. Mommsen in GIL i 2 , p. 376. 



492 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

Banded with these four families, the Catonian faction suffered 
heavy loss through loyal or stubborn adhesion to lost causes— 
Pompcius, Libert as and Antonius. Cato’s son fell at Philippi and 
the Porcii lapsed into obscurity if not extinction . 1 No more 
consuls came of the Luculli, the Lutatii, the Hortcnsii, the Servilii 
Caepiones or the Calpurnii Bibuli. The Domitii, however, sur¬ 
vived and prospered through the marriage alliance which the 
grandson of Caesar’s enemy contracted with the daughter of 
Antonius and Octavia. Of the family of Brutus, his sister, Cassius’ 
wife, was the last. She died at the age of ninety-three. At her 
funeral were borne the imagines of twenty noble houses, her 
ancestors and her kin . 2 Yet Cassius’ stock, with eminent consuls, 
among them a great jurist, endured down to Nero . 5 

Certain noble families, showing their last consuls in the age of 
Pompeius, became extinct in the Civil Wars. Some, it is true, 
especially decayed branches of the patriciate, were revived from 
long obscurity bv Caesar or by Augustus, either to resplendent 
fortune or to a brief renascence before the end. Others that sur¬ 
vived proscription and battle by good fortune, diplomacy or the 
contraction of serviceable marriage alliances and lasted into the 
reign of Augustus produced no more consuls after that time. 

That was not all. To Roman and aristocratic pride the families 
that waned and died in the last generation of the Free State or 
were abruptly extinguished in the Revolution had a better fate 
than some that prolonged an ignoble existence for a generation 
or two. Depressed by vice or poverty, lack of enterprise or excess 
of principle, some of the nobiles failed to reach the consulate under 
Augustus. The son of P. Servilius Isauricus lived on in dull 
indolence, merely praetorian in rank and leaving no heir ; 4 his 
spirited sister chose to perish with her husband, young Lepidus. 
Scaurus was spared after Aetium. His son became consul under 
Tiberius, a great orator and a man of infamous life , 5 fit partner 


* It is not certain that the delator Porcius Cato (Tacitus, Ann. 4, 68 ff ), suffect 
consul in a.d. 36, belonged to this family. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 76. The most germane were not in evidence—‘sed prae- 
fulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso quod effigies eorum non visebantur.’ 

3 L. and C. Cassius, consul and suffect consul in a.d. 30 (sons of L. Cassius 
Longinus, cos. suff. a.d. 11). The former was married to Drusilla, daughter of 
Germanicus: the latter, the jurist (praised by Tacitus, Ann. 12, 12), was exiled by 
Nero (Ann. 16, 7 fff.). 

4 Seneca, Epp. 55, 2 fT., cf. Miinzer, RA, 374L He is described as ‘ille praetorius 
dives, nulla alia re quam otio notus\ The descent and relationships of M. Servilius 
(cos. a.d. 3) are not known. Like his son, he may have had th c cognomen ‘Nonianus’. 

5 Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus, cos. suff. anno incerto , ‘insignia nobilitate et 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 493 

for Quirinius , Aemilia Lepida, who bore him a son with whom 
the family ended. M. Hortensius Hortalus, the grandson of the 
illustrious orator, was subsidized by Augustus and encouraged to 
bring up a family: Tiberius refused to help, and it lapsed into a 
shameful poverty . 1 

In the record of disaster and degradation, ‘illustrium domuum 
adversa’, the victims of secret political intrigues in the family of 
the Princeps won unhappy prominence. Their morals were im¬ 
pugned: it was their name or their ambition that ruined them. 
Two young patricians, the last Scipio and the last Appius Clau¬ 
dius Pulcher, were put to death for offences against the State . 2 
Another noble, a Sempronius Gracchus, was banished and killed 
in exile; his son, reduced to destitution and the ignoble life of 
a retail trader in Africa and Sicily, found that obscurity and 
commercial pursuits were no protection from the doom of an 
illustrious name . 3 

Yet these were not the most prominent among the sacrifices of 
the blood-stained Principate, not the closest in power, in prestige, 
or in family to the Princeps. Allies and enemies now became 
involved in the most fantastic relationships. The families of the 
Julii, the Aemilii, the Antonii and the Domitii perpetuated their 
compacts and their feuds over the body of the dying Republic 
and under the shadow of the Monarchy. Caesar, with the alliance 
of the Aemilii and certain other patrician houses, prevailed over 
Pompeius and the dominant faction of the nobilitas. But the Julii 
left no direct heir, and the grandnephew of the Dictator, an 
Octavius from Velitrae, after fighting against the great houses, 
attached them to his family and built up a new faction. By force 
or craft he had defeated the Aemilii and the Antonii: to rule at 
Rome, he needed their descendants. The heir to his power was 
a Claudian. 

That was fitting. From the day when the great ancestor, Attus 
Clausus, migrating from the Sabine country to Rome, settled 
there with the company of his clients, the patrician house of the 
Claudii had been an integral part of the history of the Republic. 
Tiberius, doubly Claudian, for the line ran through both parents, 

orandis causis, vita probrosus’ (Tacitus, Ann. 6, 29, cf. 3, 66). On his vices, Seneca, 
Be ben. 4, 31, 3 f.; on his marriage to Aemilia Lepida, Ann. 3, 23. 1 Ann. 2, 37 f. 

- Alleged paramours of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, see above, p. 426. 

’ Ann. 4, 13: ‘adultus inter extorris et liberalium artium nescios mox per Africam 
ac Siciliam mutando sordidas merces sustentabatur; neque tamen effugit magnae 
fortunae pericula.’ His father had been executed in a.d. 14 by Asprenas the pro- 
consul of Africa (Ann. 1, 53). 



494 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

could look back through the annals of the family to that Appius 
Claudius who had promoted the aristocratic reform programme 
of Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, to the victor of the Metaurus, to 
the blind old censor, to the Decemvir. Yet by a paradox the power 
went, not to the brilliant and ambitious branch of the Claudii, 
the Pulchri, but to the more modest Nerones. 

For Tiberius the splendid prize was spoiled and tarnished. 
Like a Roman noble, the Claudian had aspired to primacy among 
his peers—but not at the cost of personal humiliation, through 
disaster and bloodshed as an aged despot's disappointed and 
enforced choice of a successor . 1 Tiberius Caesar hated the mon¬ 
archy—it meant the ruin of Roman and Republican virtue. The 
Principate was not a monarchy in name. That made it all the 
worse. The duty of rule was a grievous servitude: to the burden 
was added the discomfort of a false role. It broke Tiberius and 
the Principate as well. 

When Augustus died, tranquil and composed, his daughter, 
his grandson and his granddaughter were in banishment, con¬ 
fined to islands. So much for the nearest of his kin among the 
descendants of the Julii. Iullus Antonius, the alleged paramour 
of Julia, had been executed: his son, the last of the Antonii, lived 
on in the obscurity of a private station, relegated to the university 
of Massilia . 2 Two Aemilii had met violent ends, accused of 
conspiracy . 3 Such was the price of dynastic name and dynastic 
alliance. 

The Aemilii and the Domitii Ahenobarbi perpetuated a direct 
succession in the male line, but with diverse fortune. The Aemilii 
had been perilously close to the supreme power, with M. Aemilius 
Lepidus the Triumvir and L. Aemilius Paullus, the husband of 
the younger Julia. They were destined never to grasp it. The 
last of them, married to a sister of Caligula and designated by 
Caligula as his successor, succumbed to the evil destiny of his 
family—conspiracy and a violent death . 4 

Lacking the primeval and patrician distinction of Aemilii and 
Claudii, the Domitii, a dynastic plebeian house of fairly recent 
nobility, would yet, to the contemporaries of Pompeius, have 
seemed destined to achieve power in the end. Inheriting from 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,7: ‘per uxorium ambitum et senili adoptione inrepsisse.’ 

2 lb. 4, 44: ‘ubi specie studiorum nomen exilii tegeretur.’ 

3 The Triumvir’s son and L. Aemilius Paullus, cos. a.d. r. 

4 M. Aemilius Lepidus, the husband of Drusilla, alleged to have conspired with 
Lcntulus Gaetulicus against Caligula and executed in a.d. 39 (Suetonius, Cal. 24, 3). 
According to Dio (59, 22, 6 f.), Caligula promised him the succession. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 495 

his father not only great estates but boundless popularity with 
the plebs of Rome, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus was formidable in 
politics from early youth. Like Brutus originally an enemy of 
Pompeius, and through that feud brought into conflict with Caesar, 
he followed Cato's lead and fell at Pharsalus. Whatever had been 
the vicissitudes of the subsequent struggle, if the Liberators had 
prevailed at Philippi or Antonius at Actium, the ultimate result 
might have been much the same for the Domitii: prominent among 
the Liberators and himself the last admiral of the Republic, Cn. 
Domitius stood next to Antonius for leadership in his party. 

To the Domitii, primacy might be delayed, but not denied for 
ever. The complex marriage policy of Augustus transmitted a 
peculiar and blended inheritance to the later generations of the 
Julii and Claudii. Livia had given her husband no children— 
but the Claudii ruled. And in the end, by posthumous and 
ironical justice, Antonius and his admiral became the ancestors 
of emperors. As time went on, the Julii, the Antonii and the 
Claudii met and mingled in their successors. Caligula, Claudius 
and Nero all had Antonian blood in their veins, Nero from both 
sides of his family. Nero, the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian 
dynasty, was also the last of the Domitii Ahenobarbi, eight con¬ 
suls before him in eight generations. 1 

But Nero was not the last survivor of the blood of Augustus. 
The Junii Silani, connected already with the Aemilii, attain to 
alarming prominence under the Principate. M. Junius Silanus, 
grandson of the renegade who became consul in 25 B.C., married 
Aemilia Lepida, the daughter of L. Aemilius Paullus and of Julia, 
the granddaughter of the Princeps. The union was blessed with 
three sons and tw r o daughters, all of whom in turn, by death or 
relegation, paid full penalty for the exiguous trickle of the divine 
blood of Augustus in their veins and enriched the scandalous 
history of the Julio-Claudian age, from the blameless M. Silanus, 
whom Caligula called the ‘golden sheep', down to Junia Calvina, 
‘festivissima puella\ who survived until the last year of the 
Emperor Vespasian. 2 

Such was the end of certain noble houses whose pedigrees 
were closely and fatally entwined with the family tree of the 
Julio-Claudians. Other families related in some way or other to 

1 Cf. Velleius’ remarks on the ‘felicitas’ of the Domitii (2, 10, 2). 

2 On the Junii Silani, PIR l t I 541 ff.; the stemma, ib. 550; cf. also Table IV at 
end. M. Junius Silanus, the ‘pecus aurea’, was killed in a.d. 54 (Tacitus, Ann . 
1 3 » 0 - Junia Calvina was relegated on a charge of incest with one of her brothers 
(Ann. 12, 4); for the date of her death, cf. Suetonius, Divus Vesp. 23, 4. 



496 TIIE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

the reigning dynasty died out before long. The Claudii Marcelli 
and the March Philippi, ancient plebeian houses, were the first 
to go. 1 The line of the obscure but newly ennobled Appuleii was 
extinguished with the death of the young son born to Sex. Ap- 
puleius (cos. a.d. 14) and Fabia Numantina. 2 The patrician P. 
Quinctilius Varus had left a son by Claudia Pulchra: he suc¬ 
cumbed to a prosecution in the reign of Tiberius, and the family 
is not heard of afterwards. 3 

The Fabii and the Valerii regained distinction and power 
through the patronage of Caesar and of Augustus. Of the Fabii, 
Persicus, the illustrious friend of Claudius, was the latest survivor ; 4 
the Valerii terminated with two characters symbolic of the doom 
of a class, Claudius’ wife, the beautiful and abandoned Valeria 
Messallina, in whose veins ran the blood of Claudii, Domitii and 
Marcelli, and an impoverished consul in the reign of Nero. 5 
Such was the end of ancient patrician houses that recalled the 
earliest glories of the infant Republic. 

Other names, of recent and ruinous notoriety in the last gene¬ 
ration of the Free State, Sulla, Cinna, Crassus and Pompeius, 
were still prominent in the first days of the Empire but their direct 
line did not survive the dynasty of the Julii and Claudii, their 
rivals and social equals. It was fitting that they should all end 
with the end of a period. 

Crassus’ grandson, the ambitious proconsul of Macedonia, 
perpetuated the Licinii who merged, by adoption after another 
generation, with the family of L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 B.c.). 
Pompeius the Great had descendants only through collaterals or 
through the female line, such as Cn. Cornelius Cinna, and the 
Scribonii, issue of the daughter of Sex. Pompeius. Nor was the 
house of Sulla extinct—an obscure grandson in the Principate 
of Augustus produced consular sons. 6 By paradox all of these 
families at first escaped alliance with the ruling dynasty, pro¬ 
viding no victims at all for the domestic dramas of Augustus’ 
Principate. Before long, however, they became entangled, not 

1 Neither L. Marcius Philippus (cos. suff. 38 b.c.), nor another Marcius, namely 
Censorinus (cos. 8 B.c.), seems to have left male issue The last consular Marcellus 
was consul m 22 b.c. 2 ILS 935. 3 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 66. 

4 Paullus Fabius Persicus, cos. a.d. 34, son of the consul of n b.c. Persicus was 
the last consul: on a possible son, cf. E. Groag, P-W vi, 1835, discussing Juvenal 
3, 212 flf. 

5 M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, cos. a.d. 58 (cf. Juvenal 1, 107 f.), was the last 
consular Valerius. For the stemma of Messallina, cf. PIR V 89. 

6 For a stemma of the descendants of Sulla, of necessity conjectural, cf. PIR 2 C, 
facing p. 362. See also Table V at end. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 497 

only among themselves, as when a Piso, adopted by a Crassus, 
married a Scribonia descended from Pompeius, but also with the 
Julio-Claudians in the various ties of adoption, betrothal or 
marriage, with paradoxical and fatal results, dragging other fami¬ 
lies down to ruin. 1 A descendant of Pompeius Magnus raised 
civil war against Claudius. 2 

The Cornelii Lentuli grew smaller and smaller: if they went 
on long enough, they would disappear, so a wit of the Republic 
observed. 3 Yet this family survived the alliance with Pompeius 
Magnus, inherited from the Scipiones, avoided entanglements 
with Augustus and kept on good terms with Tiberius, acquiring 
a new lease of life. They display seven consuls on the Fasti of 
Augustus' Principate. Both the Cornelii Lentuli and the Pisones 
supported Tiberius, furnishing generals and political counsellors. 4 
The prominence of the Lentuli, threatened for a moment by the 
fall of their ally Seianus, was shattered by the ruin of Lentulus 
Gaetulicus, who was suppressed for alleged conspiracy against 
Caligula, and the family can show no consuls in any branch after 
Nero. 5 The Calpurnii, however, provide a continuous list of 
victims, blended and involved with the descendants of Pompeius 
and Crassus. A son of L. Calpurnius Piso married Scribonia, a 
female descendant of Pompeius ; 6 hence a family foredoomed like 
the Silani, with four brothers all to perish by violent ends, among 
them that irreproachable and academic Piso whom Galba un¬ 
wisely adopted to a four days' partnership of the purple. 7 One of 
them left a son, namely C. Calpurnius Crassus Frugi Licinianus, 
whose historic name, spared by Domitian, could not escape 
allegations of conspiracy against both Nerva and Trajan. 8 He 
was duly relegated, but not executed until the beginning of the 
reign of Hadrian. Another branch of the Pisones, however, lasted 
even longer. () 

1 For example, the Furn, the Scribonii and the Arruntii. 

1 L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, cos. a.d. 32 ( PIR a , A 1140). Pompeian 
blood is attested by ILS 976, cf. PIR 2 , A 1147, and above, p. 425. 

’ Quintilian 6, 3, 67: ‘P. Oppius dixit de gen ere Lentulorum, eum assidue 
minores parentibus liberi essent, nascendo interiturum 

4 Above, p. 436 f. For the stemma of the Lentuli, PIR C, facing p. 328. 

s On Gaetulicus, cos. a.d. 26, the son of Cossus, cf. PIR J , C 1390. Gaetulicus* 
daughter was betrothed to the son of Seianus (Tacitus, Ann. 6, 30), reinforcing an 
earlier link between their families (ILS 8996). The last consular Lentuli were P. 
Scipio and P. Scipio Asiaticus (a.d. 56 and 68). 

(> M. Licinius Crassus Frugi, cos. a.d. 27. 

7 For the stemma, cf. Table V at end. * PIR*, C 259. 

v C. Calpurnius Piso, cos. a.d. hi (PIR 2 , C 285) and consuls sixty years later 
(PIR*, C 295 and 317). 



498 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

So much for the nobiles. The successful novi homines of the 
Revolution and of the New State were by no means exempt from 
the infertility or the ill fortune that attended upon the progeny 
of consulars. Their record displays the sharpest of contrasts in 
fate and duration. Some were unable to perpetuate their name 
and establish the families which their resplendent fortune could 
so handsomely have endowed. The Caesarian partisans Vatinius, 
Trebonius, Hirtius and Pansa left no consular descendants, any 
more than had Pompeius’ consuls Afranius and Gabinius. Cicero 
had been the great novas homo of that age: the family ended with 
his bibulous son. 

The marshals and admirals of the Triumviral period seldom 
left heirs to their acquired dignity. The names of Ventidius 
and Canidius belong to history: no offspring of theirs could 
hope to receive the consulate from the Caesarian leader. But the 
Caesarians themselves seem to fare little better. The vaunting 
Cornificius vanished utterly. Obscurity again envelops the un¬ 
familiar names of Carrinasand Laronius. With their disappearance 
the Fasti become less alien and truculent to public view. Yet 
the great Lucanian Taurus, Calvisius his ally and peer and 
C. Norbanus Flaccus founded noble families; 1 and the diplomats 
Plancus and Pollio, tenacious of life themselves, each produced one 
son at least. Daughters, however, were the heirs of the Gaditane 
Cornelius Balbus and of Sosius, Antonius' admiral. 2 M. Titius 
had no known progeny from his alliance with the patrician Fabii; 
and other novi homines disappear utterly or prolong their family 
by one generation only. 3 

Nor are the new families ennobled for loyal service in the years 
of peace and the Principate always rich in offspring. The only 
son of L. Tarius Rufus was banished after an attempt to assassi¬ 
nate his grim parent. 4 Lollius, too, had only one son. M. Papius 
Mutilus the Samnite and the two Vibii from Larinum are the 
first and the last consuls of their families. Papius and his col¬ 
league in the consulate, the Picene Q. Poppaeus Secundus, were 

1 On the descendants of Taurus, with consuls under Claudius, P-W ill A, 2198. 
Calvisius’ line, continued by a son (cos. 4 b.c.), ended with his grandson (cos. a.d. 
26), legate of Pannonia and accused of high treason in a.d. 39. Presumably an ally 
of Gaetulicus, cf. PIR 2 , C 354: his wife was a Cornelia (Dio 59, 18, 4). 

2 Balbus’ daughter married C. Norbanus Flaccus, cos. 25 b.c. (PIR*, C 1474); 
Sosius’ daughter married Sex. Nonius Quinctilianus, cos. a.d. 8 (ILS 934). 

3 For example, no issue is known of T. Peducaeus (cos. suff. 35 B.c.) or of L. Autro- 
nius Paetus and L. Flavius (suflfect consuls in 33 B.c.). P. Alfenus Varus (cos. 
suff. 39 B.c.), L. Caninius Gallus (cos. 37 b.c.), and M. Herennius (cos. 34 b.c.) 
each had a consular son, but no further descendants. 4 Seneca, De clem. 1, 15. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 499 

unmarried. The other Poppaeus, a military man, left a daughter. 1 
Quirinius, however, could show no children for two marriages with 
daughters of the patriciate, a Claudia and an Aemilia. 2 

Certain of the more reputable of the Triumviral or Augustan 
novi homines , however, appeared to have established their families 
securely enough. But good fortune seldom accompanied their 
descendants. The families of two Pompeian partisans, L. 
Scribonius Libo and L. Arruntius, acquired a fatal connexion 
with the Pompeii. 3 Association with the reigning dynasty was no 
less dangerous. Like the nobiles , the new consular families, as 
befitted the dual composition of the governing oligarchy, became 
involved in the family history, court scandals or judicial murders 
of the Julio-Claudian line. Caligula blushed for the shame of his 
paternal grandfather, the plebeian Agrippa. One of the wives of 
Caligula, and also a candidate for the hand of Claudius when the 
sword removed Valeria Messallina, was the beautiful and opulent 
Lollia Paullina, the granddaughter and heiress of M. Lollius. 4 
Her end too was violent. The grandson of M. Vinicius married 
a princess, Julia Livilla, the daughter of Germanicus, and fell a 
victim to the intrigues of Messallina. 5 The second and third 
wives of Nero bore the now historic but by no means antique 
names of Poppaea Sabina and Statilia Messallina. With the end 
of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Augustan as well as the Re¬ 
publican nobility seemed to have run its course. 

Yet the succeeding period did not entirely lack bearers of 
Augustan consular names to adorn the Fasti —their principal use. 
For all else they were believed a danger, though often only a 
nuisance, so great a tribute did Roman conservatism and snob¬ 
bery pay to the possession of ancestors. As has been shown, the 
marshals of Augustus, the flower of Italy, did not respond to his 
national policy by the production of numerous offspring. Certain 
stocks of the new nobility, however, were prudent and tenacious 
enough to ensure consuls for several generations, Calvisius and 
Norbanus to the third, Taurus to the fourth. Less spectacular, 
the family of C. Antistius Vetus (cos. suff. 30 b.c.) lasted longer. 6 


1 She married the obscure T. Ollius (Tacitus, Ann. 13, 45), of a Picene family, 
cf. CIL i 2 , 1919 (Cupra Maritima). Her daughter was Nero’s consort. 

2 Above, p. 379. 3 See above, pp. 425, 497. 

4 Lollia Paullina, taken away from P. Memmius Regulus by Caligula (Ann. 12, 

22) and soon dropped by him: willing to marry Claudius, Ann. 12, 1. She was 
exiled and killed, Ann. 12, 22. 

5 M. Vinicius, cos. 30, cos. ir 45, cf. Tacitus, Ann. 6, 15; Dio 60, 27, 4. 

6 Down to the consul of a.d. 96, in direct succession. 



5 oo THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

The Etruscan A. Caecina was prolific. 1 P. Silius Nerva had three 
sons, all consulars. 2 But his three grandsons, two consuls and a 
consul-designate, did not outlive the Julio-Claudians; one of 
them perished with Messallina, his imperial paramour. 3 The last 
consulars of the names Statilius Taurus, Sentius Saturninus and 
Vinicius belong to the reign of Claudius. Pollio was survived by 
only one son, Callus, who came to a miserable end. But Gallus 
propagated the Asinii with six sons, of whom three at least at¬ 
tained to consular rank: 4 a direct descendant was consul under 
Trajan. s In the Flavian period two consuls recalled the merits of 
1 ,. Volusius Saturninus (cos. 12 B.C.), himself of an ancient and 
respectable family that had not risen above the praetorship. (> 

Even under Trajan and Hadrian there were venerable relics of 
the aristocracy, rare and portentous from the disappearance of 
their peers. The family of M. Plautius Silvanus from Tibur had 
become connected in some way, through marriage or adoption, 
with a new consular stock of the time of Augustus, the Aelii 
Lamiae. 7 The last Lamia was consul in 116, by which time that 
name stood for the bluest blood. 8 The descendants of another 
novus homo , L. Nonius Asprenas (cos. suff. 36 B.c.), lasted as long 
and perpetuated the blood of L. Calpurnius Piso in the person of 
L. Nonius Calpurnius Torquatus Asprenas, twice consul, under 
Domitian and under Hadrian. 9 

For prudence and for success, it might have seemed that all 
would be outdone by the Cocceii, Antonian partisans ennobled 
in the Triumviral period. Though missing the consulate under 
Augustus, they were favoured by subsequent emperors, down to 
and including Domitian. When Domitian was assassinated, the 
elderly and peaceful M. Cocceius Nerva w as elevated to the purple. 
He had no children—one of the reasons, no doubt, for the choice. 
There w r ere others: at this time there can have been in existence 
few direct descendants even of a Triumviral consul. 10 

1 His wife had given birth to six children, Tacitus, Ann. 3, 33. 

2 For the stemma, PIR\ S 512. 3 Ann. 11, 26 ff. 

4 PIR t t A 1229. 5 M. Asinius Marcellus, cos. 104. 

6 The consuls of 87 and 92. For the stemma, PIR } y V 666. 

7 Ti. Plautius Silvanus Aelianus (JLS 986) is probably an Aelius Lamia by birth, 
of which house after the consul of a.d. 3 no direct descendants are known. 

8 Juvenal speaks of Domitian as ‘Lamiarum caede mddenti’ (4, 154). 

'* P-W xvii, 877 f.; for the stemma, ih., 870. Of all noble houses, however, the 
Acilii Glabriones, not of great political consequence in the early Prinrcipate, survive 
the longest, PIR l y A 62 ff., with consuls in the direct line in a.d. 210, and in a.d. 
256 

10 Cf. Groag's masterly elucidation of his family connexions, Jahreshefte XXI-XXII 
(1924), Uciblatt 425 ff. If Groag is correct, the maternal uncle of Nerva married 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 501 

Even Nerva seems an anachronism. He was succeeded by a 
man from Spain, M. Ulpius Traianus, the son of a consular and 
therefore a person of social as well as of military distinction. 
With Trajan, a Spanish and Narbonensian faction comes to 
power. New men had ever been pressing forward, able, wealthy 
or insinuating, devoted to the government whoever the Princeps 
might be. The son of the consular Passienus, adopted by the 
Augustan secretary of state Sallustius, became a great courtier, an 
artist in adulation and the husband of princesses. 1 That was the 
end of a Sabine family. Passienus could not compete with L. 
Vitellius, three times consul. Vitellius was the son of a knight, 
procurator of Augustus. When he died after a brilliant career 
of service—his enemies called it sordid adulation—trusted by 
'Tiberius, by Caligula and by Claudius, a statue was erected in 
the Forum at Rome bearing an inscription that commemorated 
his unswerving loyalty—‘pietatis immobilis erga principem’.- It 
might have been set up under any reign. Such men deserved to 
succeed. Vitellius was the most versatile politician since Plancus.’* 
One of his sons married Junia Calvina, of the blood of Augustus; 4 
the other enjoyed a brief tenure of the Principate that Augustus 
had founded. 

Ambition, display and dissipation, or more simply an incapa¬ 
city to adopt the meaner virtues and ignoble devices that brought 
success in a changed and completely plutocratic order of society, 
steadily reduced the fortunes of the nobiles. Frugal and astute 
men of property from the newer parts of Italy and the civilized 
regions of the West prospered in their place. When Claudius 
proposed to admit to the Roman Senate certain chieftains of the 
peoples of Gallia Comata, there arose indignant protest in his privy 
council—those wealthy dynasts would swamp out descendants of 
noble houses and impoverished senators from Latium. 5 The harm 
had already been done. The millionaires Balbus and Seneca 


Rubdlia Bassa, daughter of that Rubellius Blandus who was the husband of Julia 
the granddaughter of Tiberius. The tie with the Julio-Claudians is surely too 
tenuous to have mattered much. 

1 PJR\ P 109. For his full name, C. Sallustius Crispus Passienus, cf. L'ann. ep. y 
j 9-24, 72. He was married first to Nero’s aunt, Domitia, then to Nero’s mother, 
Agrippina. For examples of his adulation, cf. the scholia on Juvenal 4, 81. 

2 Suetonius, Vitellius 3, 1. 

3 Seneca, NQ 4, praef. 5: ‘Plancus, artifex ante Vitellium maximus.’ Passienus 
is mentioned in the following section. 

4 L. Vitellius, married to Calvina, cf. Tacitus, Ann. 12, 4. 

s Tacitus, Ann. 11, 23: ‘quern ultra honorem residuis nobilium aut si quis 
pauper e Latio senator foret? oppleturos omnia divites illos.’ 



502 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

were the real enemies. It is in every way fitting that Spain and 
Narbonensis should have supplied the first provincial emperors, 
of stock Italian, native or mixed, the descendants or the peers of 
colonial magnates or of native dynasts who received the citizen¬ 
ship from proconsuls of the last century of the Republic—and 
from Caesar the Dictator even admission to the Roman Senate. 

To explain the fall of the Roman Republic, historians invoke 
a variety of converging forces or movements, political, social and 
economic, where antiquity was prone to see only the ambition 
and the agency of individuals. On any count, Balbus should be 
added. The banker Atticus knew all about contemporary history: 
Balbus had a share in the making of it, from the dynasts’ pact in 
60 b.c. through civil wars and Dictatorship into the rule of the 
Triumvirs. The man from Gades, consul in 40 B.c., is a portent, 
it is true—but a portent of the future power of Spaniards and 
Narbonensians. By the time of Caligula, Narbonensis provides 
two consuls, a Valerius from Vienna and a Domitius from 
Nemausus, descendants of native families long enfranchised. 1 
A few years, and Seneca the Corduban and Sex. Afranius Burrus 
from Vasio, the Prefect of the Guard, in alliance govern the 
world for Nero, dispensing patronage and advancement to their 
friends or fellow countrymen. 2 Agricola, one of the principcs viri 
of the Flavian age, and M. Ulpius Traianus, the son of another, 
were patrician into the bargain. Trajan was the first provincial 
emperor, a Spaniard married to a woman from Nemausus. } 
Hadrian, his nearest kinsman, followed, then Antoninus Pius, in 
origin a Narbonensian from Nemausus. Even had Antoninus 
Pius not become emperor, he would still have been one of the 
wealthiest citizens in all the world. 

Hostility to the nobilcs was engrained in the Principate from its 
military and revolutionary origins. In the first decade of his con¬ 
stitutional rule, Augustus employed not a single nobilis among the 
legates who commanded the armies in his provincia, and only three 
men of consular standing. When his position becomes stronger, 

1 D. Valerius Asiatieus, consul under Caligula, cos. 11 46, and Cn. Domitius 
Afer, cos. suff. 39. 

2 The origin of Burrus is revealed by ILS 1321. It is no accident that the 
governors of Lower Germany early in Nero’s reign were Pompeius Paullinus and 
L. Duvius Avitus in succession (Amt. 13, 53 f.). The former was Seneca’s brother- 
in-law, from Arelate, Pliny A 7 / 33, 143 : the latter came from V asio (CIL xii, 1354) 

3 That PompeiaPlotina came from Nemau sus is made probable, but not proved, by 
SHAHadr. 12, 2. A slight confirmation, so far ignored, is the woman of Nemausus 
Pompeia Marullina, sister, wife or mother of an eminent military man of the time, 
whose name is missing (CIL xii, 3169). 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 503 

and a coalition government based largely on family ties has been 
built up, nobiles like Ahenobarbus, Piso and Paullus Fabius 
Maximus govern the military provinces, it is true. But a rational 
distrust persists, confirmed under his successors by certain dis¬ 
quieting incidents, and leads to the complete exclusion of the 
nobiles , the delayed but logical end of Revolution and Empire. 

Noble birth still brought the consulate as of right, and after 
a long interval of years the proconsulate of Asia or of Africa. For 
all else it was perilous. Even if the nobilis forgot his ancestors 
and his name, the Emperor could not. Before long the nobiles 
disappear from the great military commands. Eight legions on 
the Rhine, brigaded in two armies, are in themselves a large part 
of the history of the first century of the Empire, the makers of 
emperors. The period of the Julio-Claudian rulers witnessed a 
steady and sometimes abrupt decline in the social distinction of 
the commanders of the Rhine legions. Under Caligula, after 
Lentulus Gaetulicus, who conspired with M. Aemilius Lepidus 
and was suppressed, came another nobilis , Ser. Sulpicius Galba. 1 
A few years pass, however, and among the army commanders of 
Claudius and Nero are to be found Curtius Rufus, whom some 
alleged to be the son of a gladiator, Duvius Avitus from Vasio, 
Pompeius Paullinus from Arelate, Narbonensians both, and L. 
Verginius Rufus from Mediolanium, like them the son of a 
Roman knight. 2 But for this defect of birth, Verginius Rufus 
might have become emperor. 3 Nero and his advisers had made 
a prudent choice. They also thought that they could safely en¬ 
trust a military province, Hispania Citerior (Tarraconensis), to 
a descendant of the Republican nobility and a loyal servant of the 
government, Ser. Sulpicius Galba: they should have been right, 
for Galba was only the facade of a man, in no way answering to 
his name or his reputation. 4 But the prediction made long ago 
came true—fear, folly or ambition spurred Galba to empire and 
to ruin. 

The lesson was not lost. Nero was the descendant of Aheno¬ 
barbus, of Antonius, of Augustus. Vespasian’s nobility was his 
own creation. The Flavians had cause to be suspicious. Though 
the murderous tyranny of the Julio-Claudians has all but ex- 

1 Suetonius, Galba 6, 2 f. 

2 For Paullinus and Avitus, see above, p. 502, n. 2; for Curtius Rufus, Ann . 11, 
21. The origin of Verginius Rufus is made reasonably certain by combining the 
evidence of Pliny, Epp. 2, r, 8 and the inscr. ILS 982, cf. PIR 1 , V 284. 

J Tacitus, Hist. 1, 52: ‘merito dubitasse Verginium equestri familia, ignoto 
patre.’ 4 lb. 1, 49 (ultimate and damning). 



504 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

hausted the Republican and the Augustan nobility, there are still 
on the Fasti three Republican nobiles and some seven or eight men 
sprung from Triumviral or Augustan consuls: only one man of 
this class commands an army, and a small one at that. He was 
Ti. Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, an old man and a personal friend 
of Vespasian. 1 2 Thenceforward a newer nobility, sons or grand¬ 
sons of Roman knights for the most part, govern the great military 
provinces of the Empire. 

Though all too often arrogant, selfish and licentious, the 
governing class of the Republic was fertile in talent of the most 
varied orders. It is too simple an explanation of the decline of the 
nobiles under the Empire to assert their lack of ability; and much 
of the hostile testimony that could be adduced is nothing more 
than the perpetuation of the schematic contrast which virtuous 
and pushing novi homines of Republican days were in the habit 
of drawing between their own ‘industria’ and the ‘inertia' of the 
nobles. The true causes lie deeper: as has been shown, they are 
political and economic. It was the acute consciousness of personal 
insecurity and political impotence that depressed and perverted 
the morale of the aristocracy. There was no field left them now 
for action—or even for display. Insistence upon dignitas or magni - 
tudo animi was a dangerous anachronism. Murena would have 
escaped his doom had he been content with ‘aurea mediocritas’.- 
The last and only refuge of Roman virtue and aristocratic inde¬ 
pendence of temper was to die like a gentleman. If he wished to 
survive, the bearer of a great name had to veil himself in caution 
or frivolity and practise with ostentation the sober virtue of quies 
or political quietism—an inheritance from a lower and commer¬ 
cial order of society, the Roman knights. He might have to sink 
further yet, to make his peace, through subservience or through 
adulation, with the real forces in politics—knights and freedmen, 
courtiers male and female. Quies preserved the house of the 
Cocceii through many generations ; 3 but it could not ultimately 
protect the grandson of Augustus’ marshal Vinicius from the 
resentment of Valeria Messallina. 4 

1 ILS 986. The precise meaning of ‘nnhilis* under the Empire is hard t<> 
establish. E. Stein ( Hermes mi (1917), 564ft.) argues that it applies to families 
consular before a.d. 14—the year in which election by the People was abrogated. 
W. Otto’s definition (ib. Li (1916), 73 ff.) is probably too wide. 

2 Horace, Odes 2, 10, 5. 

1 Martial (5, 28, 4; 8, 70, 1) lauds the quies of Nerva—which he refers to himself 
in an edict (Pliny, Epp. 10, 58). 

4 Dio 60, 27, 4: rrjv dc 8 rj rjavy iclv ayow Kai ra eavrov TTparTow ccrcufcro. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 505 

The nobiles were pushed aside from power, stripped of their 
estates and steadily thinned by a progressive proscription. As 
under the Republic, the normal method for an ambitious man 
to secure distinction and advancement was through the conduct 
of a successful prosecution. Under the Empire the law courts 
became less political, justice less a matter of partisan interpreta¬ 
tion. At the same time, however, a new scourge arose which, 
for the aristocracy at least, counterbalanced other benefits. 
The Senate became a high court of justice and the Princeps’ 
own jurisdiction developed : high treason was a flexible and com¬ 
prehensive offence. Whether in the Senate or elsewhere, the 
prosecutor w’as tempted to allege maiestas as the main count 
or as a subsidiary charge; and the jury were afraid to absolve. 
Hence arose the dreaded tribe of prosecutors and informers. The 
position of Augustus was so strong that the evil found little 
encouragement. Tiberius, however, was insecure. The nobiles 
suffered from their own ambitions and feuds. It was a temptation 
to harass the reluctant ruler; and there were old scores to pay off. 
Moreover, the secret struggle for power and distinction went on 
as before,- enhanced by the rival ambitions of Seianus’ faction and 
the family of Gcrmanicus. At all turns the nobiles were im¬ 
perilled—above all and in the last resort by the fears of Tiberius 
and by his reluctance to interfere with the course of justice, with 
the procedure of a nominally independent Senate. 

The nobiles might savour a brief taste of revenge when scandal 
and crime rent the reigning house or when a powerful upstart, 
Gallus, Lollius or Seianus, went crashing to his fall. But they 
seldom got away unscathed from such spectacles. The present 
was ominous, the future offered no consolation. The forces of 
revolution, though confined within definite channels and adapted 
to a slower rhythm, were none the less advancing remorselessly. 
The power of the nobiles was passing to the novi homines , to the 
knights, the army and the provinces. 

After novi homines Etruscan, Samnite or Picene, Spain and 
Narbonensis open the roll of provincial consuls. They herald 
the Empire's invasion of the Roman government, they seize 
supreme power but do not hold it for long. Africa and the eastern 
lands are pressing rapidly behind, soon almost to overwhelm 
Italy and the western provinces in the cosmopolitan Senate of 
the Antonines. 1 The consular Fasti furnish the most patent 

1 Compare the results shown by I*. Lambrechts, La composition du s^nat rotnam 
dt Vaccession au trdne d'lladrien a la mart dc Commode (1936), 183 fT. 



506 THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

evidence of the intrusion of alien elements; but they indicate the 
climax rather than the origins of the process, which belong 
generations earlier when provincials were already equestrian 
officers and political or financial agents of the government, not 
merely under Augustus but even with Pompeius and Caesar. 
Once again, Balbus and Theophanes. The Emperor Claudius, 
as frank and merciless an enemy to the nobiles as any of his an¬ 
cestors, or any of the rulers of Rome, introduced his clients, the 
tribal dynasts of Comata, into the Senate. This measure, how¬ 
ever, was hasty and provocative, transient in its effects. Less 
obvious, less advertised and less discussed is Claudius' use of 
Greeks as procurators, his grant of commissions to Greeks in the 
militia equestris . 1 

The movement might only be accelerated by ‘bad emperors’ or 
masterful servants of the government. It could not be arrested. 
The defeat of the nobiles was spiritual as well as political. It was 
not merely that the Principate engrossed their power and their 
wealth: worse than that, it stole their saints and their catchwords. 
Despotism, enthroned at Rome, was arrayed in robes torn from the 
corpse of the Republic. Libert as , as has been sufficiently shown, 
may be appropriated by any faction and any government: it soon 
went the way of Pax and became Libertas Augusta. Pompeius 
Magnus was hardly worth resuscitating; and the Republicans 
never quite reckoned Cicero among the martyrs in the cause of 
Libertas. Of the authentic champions of that ideal, Brutus and 
Cassius, who had fought against Caesar’s heir at Philippi, could 
not have been invoked to support his Principate without scandal 
or inconvenience. Cato was already out of the way when 
Octavianus took up arms against the State. But Cato was wor¬ 
shipped as a martyr of liberty. Augustus conceived a genial 
device for thwarting the cult, suggested perhaps by his own 
felicitous reply when his friend Seius Strabo asked his opinion 
of Cato. 2 Augustus composed a pamphlet on the subject, which 
he was in the habit of delivering as a lecture. 3 The argument 
and the moral may readily be inferred—Cato, always an advo- 
sate of ordered government, would have been an enthusiastic 
supporter of the New State; the better cause for which Cato 

1 Note, in the militia equestris , C. Stertinius Xenophon and his brother ( SIG 3 
804 f.) from Cos, the Ephesian (?) Ti. Claudius Balbillus {Vann, ep ., 1924, 78), the 
Spartan C. Julius Laco (ib., 1927, 1), and Ti. Claudius Dinippus (ib., 1917/8, 
1 f.: Corinth). This Balbillus is probably the man who was Prefect of Egypt in 
a.d. 55 (cf. A. Stein, PIR z y C 813). 

2 Macrobius 2, 4, 18 (above, p. 320). 


3 'Suetonius, Divus Aug. 85, 1. 



THE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 507 

fought had prevailed after his death when the Roman People was 
saved from despotism and restored to Libertas. 

The Roman People grieved at the decline in power and splen¬ 
dour of the ancient families whose names embodied the history 
of Republican Rome. That was not the worst. Political liberty 
had to go, for the sake of the Commonwealth. But when in¬ 
dependence of spirit and of language perished also, when servility 
and adulation took the place or libertas and virtus , that was hard 
for a patriot and an honest man to bear. It is not so much the 
rigour of despotism as the servility and degeneracy of the nobiles 
that moves Tacitus to the sublimest indignation. Tiberius, Re¬ 
publican and Pompeian in his loyalties, himself a representative 
of the opposition to despotism and the unwilling instrument of 
the process, was sickened when men of his own class abandoned 
their Roman tradition and behaved like courtiers and flatterers 
of an oriental monarch. History has preserved a characteristic 
remark of this Republican misanthrope. 1 

Succeeding ages looked back with regret to the freedom en¬ 
joyed under the tolerant Principate of Augustus. 2 Discontent 
with their own times drove them to idealize the past. Under 
Augustus the stage for the grim tragedy of the Julio-Claudians 
has already been set, the action has begun. Like Sallustius and 
Pollio, the senator Tacitus, who admired Republican virtue but 
believed in ordered government, wrote a history of the civil wars 
that his own generation had witnessed. He had no illusions about 
the contestants or the victors in that struggle—‘solum id scires, 
deteriorem fore qui vicisset’. 3 In his old age Tacitus turned again 
to history and composed the Annals of the Empire, from the 
accession of Tiberius Caesar down to the end of Nero. Period 
and subject might also be described as ‘The Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Aristocracy’. 

Lucan, who narrated recent and authentic history in epic verse, 
a typical and traditional occupation at Rome, came from Corduba. 
His Pharsalia recorded the doom of Republican Libertas . Taci¬ 
tus, in a sense his successor, was not a Roman aristocrat either, 
but a new man, presumably of provincial extraction, like his 
father-in-law and like the best Romans of his day. Captuied and 
enslaved by the traditions of the Roman governing class and of 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 65: ‘o homines ad servitutem paratos!’ 

2 Seneca, De clem, i, r, 6: ‘nemo iam divum Augustum nec Tiberii Caesaris 
prima tempora loquitur.’ 

3 Hist . i, 50. 



5 o8 TIIE DOOM OF THE NOBILES 

Roman historical writing, Tacitus abandoned the Empire and the 
provinces and turned to what some have regarded as a narrow 
and outworn theme. 

In style, subject and treatment the Roman historians clung 
tenaciously to the memory of the first beginnings of their art, 
the record of consulates and triumphs, the elogia of the noble 
families. The earliest native historian of note, Cato the Censor, 
made his protest against this practice, omitting the names of 
generals in order to honour instead the ‘gesta populi Romani* ; r 
and Cato wrote of Italy as well as of Rome. 2 But Cato was power¬ 
less against Roman tradition. The banker Atticus was more 
typical, if a little narrow, in his conception of real history—he 
studied the genealogy of noble families and compiled the public 
careers of illustrious men. 3 The theme of history remains, as 
before, ‘clarorum virorum facta moresque’. 4 Therein lay the 
tragedy—the Empire gave no scope for the display of civic virtue 
at home and abroad, for it sought to abolish war and politics. 
There could be no great men any more: the aristocracy was 
degraded and persecuted. The record of their ruin might be 
instructive—it was not a happy task for an historian. The author 
of the Annals was moved to despair of his work. ‘Nobis in arto 
et inglorius labor.’ 5 

1 Nepos, Vita Catonis 3, 3; cf. Pliny, NH 8, 11. 

2 Dion. Hal. 1, 11, 1 ; Fronto, p. 203 N. 

3 Nepos, Vita Attici 18, 4: ‘quibus libris nihil potest esse dulcius iis qui aliquam 
cupiditatem habent notitiae clarorum virorum.* The method of these prosopo- 
graphical studies was to set forth ‘quis a quo ortus, quos honores quibusque 
temporibus cepisset*. Atticus dealt with the Junii Bruti, the Marcelli, the Scipiones, 
the Fabii and the Aemilii. 

4 Tacitus, Agr. 1,1. 

5 Ann. 4, 32. 



XXXIII. PAX ET PRINCEPS 


W HEN a party has triumphed in violence and seized control 
of the State, it would be plain folly to regard the new 
government as a collection of amiable and virtuous characters. 
Revolution demands and produces sterner qualities. About the 
chief persons in the government of the New State, namely the 
Princeps himself and his allies, Agrippa, Maecenas and Livia, 
history and scandal have preserved a sufficient testimony to un¬ 
mask the realities of their rule. The halo of their resplendent 
fortune may dazzle, but it cannot blind, the critical eye. Other¬ 
wise there can be no history of these times deserving the name, 
but only adulation and a pragmatic justification of success. 

One man only of all whom the Revolution had brought to 
power deserved any public repute, and that was Agrippa, so some 
held. 1 Candid or malignant informants reveal the most eminent 
personages in the national government as a sinister crew, worthy 
heirs to the terrible marshals of the Triumvirs—Balbus the proud 
and cruel millionaire, the treacherous and ungrateful Titius, 
the brutal and grasping Tarius, the unprepossessing Quirinius, 
bitter, hard and hated in his old age, and Lollius the rapacious 
intriguer. Nothing is known to the discredit of T. Statilius Taurus, 
C. Sentius Saturninus, M. Vinicius and P. Silius. 2 More good 
fortune perhaps than merit that their characters should be colour¬ 
less and innocuous. Their descendants enjoyed power and 
repute, their enemies kept silence; and the grandson of Vinicius 
was the patron of a loyal and zealous historian. On the other 
hand, Lollius was a political scapegoat, while Quirinius, Titius 
and Tarius left no consular sons as objects of fear or flattery. 

It is evident that a traditional Roman prejudice, sharpened 
under the domination of the Caesarian party and debarred from 
attacking the head of the government, has been at work here, eager 
to enhance or to invent an obscure origin, a repulsive character 
and evil deeds against the novi homines prominent in the oligarchy. 
As among the low-born and unprincipled scoundrels of the 
previous age, there were excellent men to be found in this com¬ 
pany, sons of the old Italian aristocracy, whose private virtues 

1 Seneca, Epp. 94, 46: ‘M. Agrippa, vir ingentis animi, qui solus ex iis, quos 
civilia bella claros potentesque fecerunt, felix in publicum fuit.’ 

' For a brief panegyric of Saturninus, see Velleius 2, 105, 1. 



510 PAX ET P RING EPS 

did not avail to compensate the cardinal crime of being on the 
‘wrong side’ in politics and profiting at the expense of their 
betters. The game of traducing the upstart may have originated 
with the aristocracy: it was cheerfully adopted by the snobbish 
fervour of other classes in society. It is precisely the sons of 
Roman knights who have handed down the most typical and 
most malicious portraits of novi homines. 

The nohiles were comparatively immune. But for that, the 
aristocratic partisans of Augustus would have illumined history 
with a constellation of characters no less vivid and detestable. 
The novus homo , avid and thrusting, stripped off all pretence in 
the race for wealth and power. The nobilis , less obtrusive, might 
be no better. After a social revolution the primacy of the nohiles 
was a fraud as well as an anachronism—it rested upon support 
and subsidy by a military leader, the enemy of their class, ac¬ 
quired in return for the cession of their power and ambition. 
Pride and pedigree returned: it masked subservience or futility. 
The nobles, emergent from threatened extinction in the revolu¬ 
tionary age, learned from adversity no lesson save the belief that 
poverty was the extremest of evils. Hence avarice or rapacity to 
repair their shattered fortunes, and the hope that the Princeps 
would provide: Rome owed them a debt for their ancestors. It 
was paid by the Principate, under pretext of public service and 
distinction in oratory or law, but more and more for the sole 
reason of birth. 1 

The Sullan oligarchy made its peace with the monarchy. By 
the end of Augustus’ reign, however, there remained but little of 
the Catonian faction or of the four noble houses that supported 
Pompeius. The patrician Lentuli were numerous, but by no 
means talented in proportion. The fact that L. Domitius Aheno- 
barbus was the grandfather of the Emperor Nero has been enough 
to redeem him from oblivion or from panegyric—he was blood¬ 
thirsty, overbearing and extravagant. 2 Augustus himself had to 
intervene, prohibiting one of his gladiatorial shows. This Aheno- 
barbus left a son, entirely detestable. 3 

Augustus set especial store by the patriciate. The last renas¬ 
cence of the oldest nobility of Rome revealed its inner falsity in 
the character of the principes viri , stupidly proud or perversely 

1 Seneca, De ben. 4, 30, 1 ff. (above, p. 374). 

2 Suetonius, Nero 4. Velleius, however (2, 72, 3), describes him as ‘eminentis- 
simae ac nobilissimac simplicitatis vir\ 

3 Suetonius, Nero 5, r: ‘omni parte vitae detestabilem/ Compare Velleius 2, 
10, 2: ‘hunc nobilissimae simplicitatis luvenem Cn. Domitium.’ 



PAX ET PRINCEPS 511 

brilliant. The Aemilii were flimsy and treacherous. Of the Sul- 
picii, Ser. Galba and his ugly hunchback father could display no 
real talent, but owed advancement to snobbery and to the favour 
of women. 1 P. Quinctilius Varus, torpid, rapacious and incom¬ 
petent, bears in those epithets the blame for three legions lost— 
not all his own fault. 2 The most eminent of the patricians were 
the Fabii and the Valerii. The Valerii produced a scandalous and 
bloodthirsty proconsul ; 3 and if more were known of the person¬ 
ality of Augustus’ intimate, the accomplished Paullus Fabius 
Maximus, ‘centum puer artium’, than is revealed by Horace’s 
charming ode and by the loyal effusions of Ovid, he might not 
stand in such startling contrast to his son, the infamous Persicus, 
whom Claudius, an emperor not averse from cruel irony, de¬ 
scribed as ‘nobilissimus vir, amicus meus’. 4 

The successful novi homines can stand their ground. Super¬ 
fluous the effort either to arraign or to rehabilitate the robust 
careerists who helped to found the monarchy. Like violence, 
guile and treachery prospered. Q. Dellius, proverbial for agility, 
deserted every side at the right moment. It is curious that 
Horace should have felt impelled to remind him of the need to 
preserve an even temper in prosperity as in adversity. 5 Dellius’ 
troubles were over. When inciting Plancus to take comfort from 
wine, Horace contemplates the possibility that Plancus may go to 
the wars again. 6 No chance of that ^ in the cool shade of Tibur 
Plancus could take his ease and reflect with no little complacency 
that throughout his campaigns, for all his title of imperator his , 
and despite the frieze of weapons on the mausoleum he was 
building at Caieta, he had seldom been responsible for the shed¬ 
ding of Roman blood. 7 With that to his credit Plancus could 
smile at the impotent envy of his detractors and the ignoble 

’ C. Sulpicius Galba (cos. suff. 5 u.c.), married to Mummia Achaica and then 
to the beautiful and wealthy Livia Ocellina (Suetonius, Galba 3, 4); his son, in 
favour with his stepmother (ib. 4, 1), with Livia Drusilla (ib. 5, 2)—and vainly 
solicited to marriage by Agrippina (ib. 5, 1). 

2 Varus was the official scapegoat for the optimism of Augustus* German policy. 
Velleius’ label ‘vir ingenio mitis, moribus quietus, ut corpore ita animo immobilior* 
(2,117, 2), like his generalized allegation of extortion in Syria (‘quam pauper divitem 
ingressus dives pauperem reliquit*), is of no independent value whatever. Varus 
certainly behaved with decision and competence in Judaea in 4 b.c. 

3 Seneca, Dc ira 2, 5, 5 (Messalla Volesus). 

4 ILS 212 11, 1 . 24 f. Commentators on this speech have failed to notice that 
Persicus was not only notorious for vice but was even the type of the degenerate 
nobilis (Seneca, De ben . 4, 30, 2). 

5 Odes 2, 3, if.: ‘aequam memento rebus in arduis | servare mentem.’ 

6 Ib. 1, 7, 19L 7 ILS 886 gives the inscription on this monument. 



512 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

appellation of a chronic traitor—‘morbo proditorV Fools or 
fanatics perished along with lost causes: the traitors and time¬ 
servers survived, earning the gratitude of the Roman People. 

More reputable and more independent characters than Dellius 
and Plancus were Messalla and Pollio, the consular patrons of 
Augustan literature, themselves no mean part of it. The Roman 
patrician and the Italian novus homo alike had salvaged honour 
and fame, yet had done w r ell for themselves and their families. 
Messalla changed sides, passing to Antonius after Philippi and 
from Antonius before long to Octavianus. Along with Agrippa, 
Messalla occupied the house of Antonius on the Palatine. 1 2 Pollio 
had been more intractable during the Civil Wars, the only neutral 
in the campaign of Actium; he retained his ‘ferocia’ under the 
New State. Pollio hated Plancus and composed a memoir to be 
published after Plancus’ death ; 3 and it was Messalla who coined 
as a title for Dellius the phrase ‘desuitor bellorum civilium’. 4 
Yet, on a cool estimate, Pollio as well as Messalla will be reckoned 
among the profiteers of the Revolution. 5 Enriched by both sides, 
Pollio augmented the dignity as well as the fortunes of his family. 
Pollio’s son Gallus married Vipsania, his daughter the son of a 
nobleman, almost the last of the Marcelli. 6 He should have had 
nothing to complain of under the new dispensation. Pollio him¬ 
self lived on to a decade before the death of Augustus, tough and 
lively to the end, Messalla w r ith failing powers until a.d. 13. 7 

In his life and in his writings Pollio professed an unswerving 
devotion to Libertas. But Libertas was destroyed when Virtus 
was shattered at Philippi. Political liberty, it could be maintained, 
was doomed if not dead long before that. Pollio knew the bitter 
truth about the last generation of the Free State. The historian 
Tacitus, commenting on the stability of the new regime when 

1 Velleius 2, 83, 1. Plancus’memory was unpopular. The Domitii kept up their 
feud (Suetonius, Nero 4); and Plancina his granddaughter, wife of Cn. Piso 
(cos. 7 B.c.), was accused of poisoning Germanicus. Hence the consistent attitude 
of Velleius. 

z Dio S3, 27, 5. 

3 Pliny, NH, praef. 31. Plancus made a hne comment—‘cum mortuis non nisi 
larvas luctari.’ 

4 Seneca, Suas . 1,7. 

5 Tacitus, Ann. 11, 7: ‘Asinium et Messallam, inter Antonium et Augustum 
bellorum praemiis refertos.’ 

6 Namely the son of Aeserninus (the grandson was an orator, mentioned along 
with Messalla and Pollio by 'J’acitus, Ann. 11,6 f.). 

7 Pollio, ‘nervosae vivacitatis haud parvum exemplum’ (Val. Max. 8, 13, 4), 
died in a.d. 5 (Jerome, Chron ., p. 170b h). The date of Messalla ’s death emerges 
from Frontinus, De aq. 102 (though this has been disputed): cf. PJR\ V 90. 



PAX ET PRINCEPS 513 

the power was to pass from Augustus to Tiberius, remarks that 
few men were still alive that remembered the Republic—‘quotus 
quisque reliquus qui rem publicam vidisset ?’ 1 His purpose was 
expressly to deny the Republic of Augustus, not to rehabilitate 
anarchy, the parent of despotism. 

The rule of law had perished long ago, with might substituted 
for right. The contest for power in the Free State was splendid 
and terrible: 

certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, 
noctes atque dies niti praestante labore 
ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri . 2 

The nobiles, by their ambition and their feuds, had not merely 
destroyed their spurious Republic: they had ruined the Roman 
People. 

There is something more important than political liberty; and 
political rights are a means, not an end in themselves. That end 
is security of life and property: it could not be guaranteed by the 
constitution of Republican Rome. Worn and broken by civil war 
and disorder, the Roman People was ready to surrender the 
ruinous privilege of freedom and submit to strict government as 
in the beginning of time: 

nam genus humanum, defessum vi colere aevum, 
ex inimicitiis languebat; quo magis ipsum 
sponte sua cecidit sub leges artaque iura . 3 

So order came to Rome. ‘Acriora ex eo vincula’, as Tacitus 
observes . 4 The New State might be called monarchy, or by any 
other name. That did not matter. Personal rights and private 
status need not depend upon the form of government. And even 
though hereditary succession was sternly banished from the theory 
of the Principate, every effort was made to apply it in practice, for 
fear of something worse: sober men might well ponder on the 
apparent ridicule and solid advantages of hereditary monarchy . 5 

Under the new order, the Commonwealth was no longer to be 
a playground for politicians, but in truth a res publica. Selfish 
ambition and personal loyalties must give way before civic duty 
and national patriotism. With the Principate, it was not merely 
Augustus and his party that prevailed—it meant the victory of 
the non-political classes. They could be safe and happy at last. 
As a survivor of the proscriptions stated, ‘pacato orbe terrarum, 

' Ann . 1, 3. 2 Lucretius 2, 11 ff. 3 lb. 5, ii45ff. 

4 Ann. 3, 28. 5 Gibbon, Decline and Fall , c. vii, init. 



5 i 4 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

res[titut]a re publica, quieta deinde n[obis et felicia] tempora 
contigeruntV No longer was the proletariat of Italy pressed into 
the legions to shed its blood for ambitious generals or spurious 
principles, no longer were the peaceful men of property to be 
driven into taking sides in a quarrel not their own or mulcted of 
their lands for the benefit of the legions. That was over. The 
Republic was something that a prudent man might admire but 
not imitate: as a wicked opportunist once observed, ‘ulteriora 
mirari, praesentia sequiV 

Even among the nobiles there can have been few genuine 
Republicans in the time of Augustus; and many of the nobiles 
were inextricably bound up with the New State, being indebted 
to it for their preservation and standing. As more and more sons 
of Roman knights passed by patronage into the ranks of the 
governing class, the conviction not merely of the inevitability but 
also of the benefits of the system must have become more widely 
diffused in the Senate. Yet while this process was going on, the 
Republic itself became the object of a sentimental cult, most 
fervently practised among the members of the class that owed 
everything to the Empire. The senator Helvidius Priscus, the 
son of a centurion, may have been sincere in his principles : 3 but 
the Roman knight w ho filled his house with the statues of Repub¬ 
lican heroes was a snob as well as a careerist . 4 

The Republican profession was not so much political as social 
and moral: it was more often a harmless act of homage to the great 
past of Rome than a manifestation of active discontent with the 
present state of affairs. It need not be taken as seriously as it was 
by suspicious emperors or by artful and unscrupulous prosecutors. 
While the Republic still maintained for a season its formal and 
legal existence, there had been deception enough in the assertion 
of Republicanism. With monarchy now firmly based in habit and 
theory as well as in fact, the very absence of any alternative form 
of rule was an encouragement to the more irresponsible type of 
serious-minded person. No danger that they would be challenged 
to put their ideals into practice. 

The Republic, with its full record of great wars abroad and 
political dissensions at home, was a splendid subject for history. 
Well might Tacitus look back with melancholy and complain that 
his own theme w r as dull and narrow. But the historian who had 

1 ILS&393. 2 Eprius Marcellus in Tacitus, Hist. 4, 8. 3 Tacitus, Hist. 4, 5. 

4 Titinius Capito (Pliny, Epp. 1, 17). This person had been a high secretary of 
state under Donntian, Ntrva and Trajan, without a break (ILS 1448). 



PAX ET PR INC EPS 515 

experienced one civil war in his own lifetime, and the threat of 
another, did not allow his judgement entirely to be blinded by 
literary and sentimental conventions. Like Sallustius and Pollio, 
he had no illusions about the Republic. The root of the trouble 
lay in the nature of man, turbid and restless, with noble quali¬ 
ties as well as evil—the strife for liberty, glory or domination . 1 
Empire, wealth and individual ambition had ruined the Republic 
long ago. Marius and Sulla overthrew libertas by force of arms 
and established dominalio . Pompeius was no better. After that, 
only a contest for supreme power/ Tacitus does not even admit 
a restoration of the Free State if Brutus and Cassius had pre¬ 
vailed at Philippi. Such was the conventional and vulgar opinion : 3 
Tacitus himself would have thought it impossible after a civil war. 

Like the historian, the student of oratory was tempted to regret 
the grand and untrammelled eloquence of the closing days of the 
Republic . 4 He might pause when he reflected that great oratory 
is a symptom of decay and disorder, both social and political. 
Electoral corruption, extortion in the provinces and the execution 
of Roman citizens furnished great themes and orators to match. 
By definition, the best form of state was spared these evils. Well- 
ordered commonwealths, lacking that ‘licence which fools call 
liberty’, left no record in the annals of eloquence . 5 Not so Athens 
and Rhodes—they were democracies, and deplorably so . 0 Rome 
too, so long as Rome was on the wrong path, produced vigor¬ 
ous oratory . 7 There were the Gracchi and Cicero—but was it 
worth it ? 8 

1 Sallust, Hist. 1, 7 m : ‘nobis primae disscnsioncs vitio humani ingenii cvenert*. 
quod inquics atque indomitum semper inter certamina libertatis ant gloriae aut 
dominationis agit.’ Compare Tacitus, Hist. 2, 38: ‘vetus ao lam pndein insita mor- 
talibus potentiate cupido cum imperii magnitudine adolevit erupitquc,’ &c. Pollio 
no doubt had similar observations to proffer. 

2 Tacitus, Hist. 2, 38: ‘mox e plebc infima C. Marius et nobilium saevissimus 
P. Sulla victam armis libertatem in dominationem vertcrunt. post quos Cn. Pom¬ 
peius occultior non melior, et numquam postea nisi de principatu quaesitum.’ 

3 And, as such, properly admitted in Hist. 1, 50: ‘mansuram fuisse sub Pompcio 

Hrutoque rent publicam.’ Not, however, in Hist. 2, 38, where the historian speaks 
lor himself. 4 Dial. 36 If. 

5 lb. 40, 2: ‘sed est magna ilia et notabilis eloquentia alumna licentiae, quam 
stulti libertatem vocitant, comes seditionum, etTrenati populi incitamentum, sine 
obsequio, sine severitate, contuntax, temeraria, adrogans, cjuae in bene constitutis 
civitatibus non oritur.’ 

(> lb. 3 : ‘apud quos omnia populus, omnia impend, omnia, ut sic dixerim, omnes 
poterant.’ 

7 lb. 4: ‘nostra quoque civitas, donee erravit, donee sc partibus et dissensionibus 
et discordiis confecit.’ 

H lb. 4: ‘sed nec tanti rei publicae Gracchorum eloquentia luit, ut pateretur et 
leges, nec bene famam eloquentiae Cicero tali cxitu pensavit.’ 



516 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

The admirer of ancient eloquence could not have the advantage 
both ways, enjoying both Republican liberty and the benefits of an 
ordered state. Nor was there need for orators any more, for long 
speeches in the Senate or before the People, when one man had 
the supreme decision in the Commonwealth, and he the wisest— 
‘cum de re publica non imperiti et multi deliberent, sed sapien- 
tissimus et unusV 

Tacitus is a monarchist, from perspicacious despair of human 
nature. There was no escape. Despite the nominal sovranty of 
law, one man ruled . 2 This is his comment on Tiberius. It was 
no less true of the Principate of Augustus—rather more so. To 
be sure, the State was organized under a principate—no dictator¬ 
ship or monarchy. Names did not matter much. Before long the 
eloquent Seneca, when counselling the young Nero to clemency, 
could employ with indifference the names of ‘rex’ or ‘princeps ’, 3 
the more so because a respectable tradition of philosophic thought 
held monarchy to be the best form of government. It was also 
primeval, fated to return again when a state had run through the 
whole cycle of change. 

The Roman, with his native theory of unrestricted imperium , 
was familiar with the notion of absolute power. The Principate, 
though absolute, was not arbitrary. It derived from consent and 
delegation; it was founded upon the laws. This was something 
different from the monarchies of the Hast. The Romans had not 
sunk as low as that. Complete freedom might be unworkable, 
but complete enslavement was intolerable. The Principate pro¬ 
vided the middle way between these extremes . 4 

It was not long before the Principate gave birth to its own 
theory, and so became vulnerable to propaganda. Augustus 
claimed to have restored Libertas and the Republic, a necessary 
and salutary fraud: his successors paid for it. Libertas in Roman 
thought and usage had never quite meant unrestricted liberty; 
and the ideal which the word now embodied was the respect for 
constitutional forms. Indeed, it was inconceivable that a Roman 
should live under any other dispensation. Hence Libertas could 
be invoked as a catchword against unpopular rulers, to stamp their 
power as illicit, in a word, as ‘dominatio’, not ‘principatus’. 

1 Dial. 41, 4. 2 Ann. 4, 33. 

3 De clem. 1, 4, 3: ‘principes regesque ct quocumquc alio nomine sunt tutores 
status publici.’ 

4 Tacitus, Hist. 1, 16: ‘imperatuius es hominibus qui nec totam servitutem pati 
possunt nec totam libertatem.’ Compare Dio 56, 43, 4: fiacnX^voixivovs re avev 
bovAclas Kai brjfioKflaToufievovs avtv hixoaravtas. 




PAX ET PR 1 NCEPS 517 

Libertas , it was widely held in senatorial circles, should be the 
very spirit of the Principate. All too long, soul and body had been 
severed. It was claimed that they were united in the Principate of 
Nerva which succeeded the absolute rule of Domitian . 1 There 
was another side to this fair show of phrases, namely, the real and 
imminent menace of a civil war. It was averted by the adoption 
of Trajan, the governor of the military province of Upper 
Germany: less was heard about Libertas under his firm regiment. 
Tacitus announced an intention of writing in his old age the 
history of that happy time, when freedom of thought prevailed 
and freedom of speech, the Principate of Nerva and the rule of 
Trajan . 2 He turned instead to the sombre theme of the Annals . 

As a Roman historian, Tacitus had to be a Republican: in his 
life and in his politics he was a monarchist. It was the part of 
prudence to pray for good emperors and put up with what you 
got . 3 Given the nature of man—‘vitia erunt donee homines'—it 
was folly to be utopian . 4 But the situation was not hopeless. 
A good emperor would dispense the blessings of his rule over the 
whole world, while the harm done by a bad emperor was not 
boundless: it fell mostly upon his immediate entourage . 5 

The Roman had once boasted that he alone enjoyed libertas 
while ruling others. It was now evident that obedience was the 
condition of empire—‘idemque huic urbi dominandi finis erit 
<{iii parendi fuerit \ 6 This is a far cry from Marcus Brutus. Anew 
conception of civic virtue, derived from the non-political classes 
of the Republic and inherent in the New State from the begin¬ 
ning, was soon formulated, with its own exemplars and its own 
phraseology. Qities was a virtue for knights, scorned by senators; 
and neutrality had seldom been possible in the political dis¬ 
sensions of the last age of the Republic. Few were the nobiles 
who passed unscathed through these trials, from caution like 
L. Marcius Philippus {cos. 91 b.c.) and his son, or from honest 
independence like Piso. 

With the Principate comes a change. For the senator, as for the 
State, there must surely be a middle path between the extremes 
of ruinous liberty and degrading servility. A sensible man could 
find it. And such there were. M . Aemilius Lepidus enjoyed the 
friendship of Tiberius; he supported the government without 

1 Tacitus, Agr. 3, 1. 2 Hist . 1,1. 

3 lb. 4, 8: ‘bonos imperatores voto expetere, qualiscumquc tolerarc.’ 

4 lb. 4 74. 

5 lb.: ‘saevi proximis ingruunt.’ 

6 Seneca, De clan, i, 4, z. 



518 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

dishonour, his own dignity without danger . 1 Likewise the excel¬ 
lent P. Memmius Regulus, a pillar of the Roman State and secure 
himself, though married for a time to Lollia Paullina, and the 
venerable L. Volusius Saturninus who survived all the perils of 
the Julio-Claudian age and died at the age of ninety-three .* 1 As 
for the family of the Coeceii, they had a genius for safety. 

There could be great men still, even under bad emperors, if 
they abated their ambition, remembered their duty as Romans 
to the Roman People and quietly practised the higher patriotism. 
It was not glorious: but glory was ruinous. A surer fame was 
theirs than the futile and ostentatious opposition of certain can¬ 
didates for martyrdom, who might be admired for Republican 
independence of spirit but not for political wisdom . 3 Neither 
Tacitus nor Trajan had been a party to this folly; the brief un¬ 
happy Principate of Nerva was a cogent argument for firm con¬ 
trol of the State. Like the vain pomp of eastern kings, the 
fanaticism of the doctrinaire was distasteful to the Romans—‘vis 
imperii valet, inania tramittuntur .’ 4 

Tacitus, his father-in-law and his emperor join hands with the 
time-servers and careerists a century earlier in the founding of the 
New State. Politics were abolished, or at least sterilized. As a 
result, history and oratory suffered, but order and concord were 
safeguarded. As Sallustius had observed, ‘pauci libertatem, pars 
magna iustos dominos volunt\ s The two were now to be recon¬ 
ciled, with constitutional monarchy as a guarantee of freedom such 
as no Republic could provide: 

nunquam libertas gratior exstat 
quam sub rege pio.° 

Such was the ‘felicissimus status’, as Augustus and Velleius 
Paterculus termed the Principate, the ‘optimus status’ which 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 4, 20: ‘unde dubitare cogor fato et sorte nascendi, ut cetera, ita 
principum inclinatio in hos, offensio in ilios, an sit aliquid in nostris consiliis 
liceatque inter abruptam contumaciam et deforme obsequium pergere iter ambi- 
tione ac periculis vacuum.’ 

2 On the virtues of Memmius (cos. suff. a.d. 31), Atm. 14, 47; for Volusius (cos. 
stiff. a.d.3), Ann. 13, 30. 

3 Tacitus, Agr. 42, 5: ‘sciant, quibus moris cst inlicita mirari, posse etiam sub 
malis principibus magnos viros esse, obsequiumque ac modestiam, si industria ac 
vigor adsint, eo laudis excedere quo plerique per abrupta, sed in nullum rei publicae 
usum, ambitiosa morte inclaruerunt.’ 

4 Tacitus, Ann. 15, 31. 

5 Hist. 4, 69, 18 M (not invalidated by the fact that it occurs in the letter of an 
oriental despot). 

6 Claudian, De cons. Stil. 3, 114 f. Compare Seneca, Dc ben. 2, 20, 2: ‘cum 
optimus civitatis status sub rege iusto sit.’ 



PAX ET PRINCEPS 519 

Augustus aspired to create and which Seneca knew as monarchy. 1 
Concord and monarchy, Pax and Princeps , were inseparable in 
fact as in hope and prayer—‘custodite, servate, protegite hunc 
statum, hanc pacem, hunc principem\ 2 The old constitution had 
been corrupt, unrepresentative and ruinous. Caesar’s heir passed 
beyond it. What was a special plea and political propaganda in 
the military plebiscite of 32 b.c. became a reality under the Prin- 
cipate—Augustus represented the Populus Romanus: under his 
trusteeship the State could in truth be called the Commonwealth, 
‘res publica’. The last of the dynasts prevailed in violence and 
bloodshed. But his potentia was transmuted into auctoritas y and 
‘dux’ became beneficent, ‘dux bonus’. Ovid perhaps went too 
far when he spoke of ‘dux sacratus’. 3 But Dux was not enough. 
Augustus assumed the irreproachable garb of Princeps, beyond 
contest the greatest of the principes and better than all of them. 
They had been selfish dynasts, but he was ‘salubris princeps’. 
He might easily have adopted the title of ‘optimus princeps’: 
that was left for Trajan. At the very beginning of Augustus’ 
Principate the ideas, later to crystallize into titles official or con¬ 
ventional, were already there. It was not until 2 b.c. that Augus¬ 
tus was acclaimed pater patriae. Horace hints at it long before: 

hie ames dici pater atque princeps . 4 
The notion of parent brings with it that of protector: 

optime Romulae 

custos gentis . 5 

And so Augustus is ‘custos rerum’ ; 6 he is the peculiar warden of 
Rome and Italy, ever ready to succour and to guard: 

o tutela praesens 
Italiae dominaeque Romae ! 7 

Greeks in the cities of the East hailed Augustus as the Saviour 
of the World, the Benefactor of the Human Race, as a God, God’s 
son manifest, Lord of Earth and Sea. Sailors from Alexandria 
paid public observance to him who was the author of their lives, 
liberty and prosperity. 8 The loyal town-council of the colony of 

1 Augustus* letter, quoted by Gellius 15, 7, 3 ; Velleius 2, 91,2. On the ‘optimus 
status’, Suetonius, Divus Aug , 28, 2; Seneca, De ben. 2, 20, 2. 

* Velleius 2, 131, 1. J Fasti 2, 60. 4 Odes 1, 2, 50. 

5 lb. 4, 5, 1 f. 6 lb. 4, 15, 16. 

7 lb. 4, 14, 43 f. On this notion and phraseology, cf. A. v. Premerstein, Vom 
Werden u. Wesen des Prinzipats , 127 ff. 

8 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 98, 2: ‘per ilium se vivere, per ilium navigare, libertate 
atque furtunis per ilium frui.’ 



520 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

Pisa showed more restraint, but meant the same thing, when they 
celebrated the ‘Guardian of the Roman Empire and Governor 
of the Whole World’. 1 

That the power of Caesar Augustus was absolute, no contem¬ 
porary could doubt. But his rule was justified by merit, founded 
upon consent and tempered by duty. Augustus stood like a soldier, 
‘in statione’—for the metaphor, though it may have parallels in 
the language of the Stoics, is Roman and military. 2 He would not 
desert his post until a higher command relieved him, his duty 
done and a successor left on guard. Augustus used the word 
‘statio’: so did contemporaries. 3 

Augustus’ rule was dominion over all the world. To the Roman 
People his relationship was that of Father, Founder and Guard¬ 
ian. Sulla had striven to repair the shattered Republic; and Cicero, 
for saving Rome in his consulate, had been hailed as pater patriae. 
But Sulla, with well-grounded hate, was styled ‘the sinister Romu¬ 
lus’; 4 Cicero, in derision of his pretensions, the ‘Romulus from 
Arpinum’. 5 Augustus, however, had a real claim to be known 
and honoured as the Founder, ‘augusto augurio’, in the phrase 
of Ennius. The Roman could feel it in his blood and in his 
traditions. Again Ennius must have seemed prophetic: 

O Romule, Romule die, 
qualcm te patriae custodem di genuerunt! 
o pater, o genitor, o sanguen dis oriundum, 
tu produxisti nos intra luminis oras. 6 

Augustus’ relation to the Roman Commonwealth might also be 
described as organic rather than arbitrary or formal. It was said 
that he arrogated to himself all the functions of Senate, magis¬ 
trates and laws. 7 Truly—but more penetrating the remark that 
he entwined himself about the body of the Commonwealth. The 
new member reinvigorated the whole and could not have been 
severed without damage. 8 

His rule was personal, if ever rule was, and his position became 

1 ILS 140, 1 . 7 f.: ‘maxsumi custodis iinperi Romani totiusque orbis tcrrarurn 
prae|si[dis].’ 

2 E. Kostermann, Philologus lxxxvii (1932), 358fT.; 43off. 

3 Augustus, in Gcllius 15, 7, 3; Velleius 2, 124, 2; Ovid, Tristia 2, 219. 

4 Sallust, Hist. 1, 55, 5 m: ‘scaevos iste Romulus.’ 

5 ‘Sallust’, In Ciceronem 4, 7. 

6 Quoted by Cicero, De re publica 1, 64. 

7 Tacitus, Ann. 1,2: ‘munia senatus magistratuum legum in se trahere.’ 

8 Seneca, De clem. 1,4, 3: ‘olim enim ita se induit rei publicae Caesar ut seduci 
alterum non possit sine utriusque pemicie. nam ut illi viribus opus est, ita et huic 
capite,' 



PAX ET PRINCEPS 521 

ever more monarchic. Yet with all this, Augustus was not indis¬ 
pensable—that was the greatest triumph of all. Had he died in 
the early years of the Principate, his party would have survived, 
led by Agrippa, or by a group of the marshals. But Augustus lived 
on, a progressive miracle of duration. As the years passed, he 
emancipated himself more and more from the control of his earlier 
partisans; the nobiles returned to prominence^and the Caesarian 
party itself was transformed and transcended. A government 
was created. 

‘Legiones classes provincias, cuncta inter se conexa.’ 1 So 
Tacitus described the Empire and its armed forces. The phrase 
might fittingly be applied to the whole fabric of the Roman State. 
It was firm, well-articulated and flexible. By appeal to the old, 
Augustus justified the new; by emphasizing continuity with the 
past, he encouraged the hope of development in the future. The 
New State established as the consolidation of the Revolution was 
neither exclusive nor immobile. While each class in society had 
its peculiar functions, there was no sharp division between classes. 
Service to Rome won recognition and promotion for senator, for 
knight or for soldier, for Roman or for provincial. The rewards 
were not so splendid as in the wars of the Revolution ; but the 
rhythm, though abated, was steady and continuous. 

It had been Augustus’ most fervent prayer that he might lay the 
foundations of the new order deep and secure. 2 He had done more 
than that. The Roman State, based firmly on a united Italy and a 
coherent Empire, was completely renovated, with new institutions, 
new ideas and even a new literature that was already classical. The 
doom of Empire had borne heavily on Rome, with threatened ruin. 
But now the reinvigorated Roman People, robust and cheerful, 
could bear the burden with pride as well as with security. 

Augustus had also prayed for a successor in the post of honour 
and duty. His dearest hopes, his most pertinacious designs, had 
been thwarted. But peace and the Principate endured. A suc¬ 
cessor had been found, trained in his own school, a Roman aristocrat 
from among the principes, by general consent capable of Empire. 
It might have been better for Tiberius and for Rome if Augustus 
had died earlier: the duration of his life, by accustoming men’s 
minds to the Principate as something permanent and enhancing 
his own prestige beyond that of a mortal man, while it consoli¬ 
dated his own regime and the new system of government, none the 
less made the task of his successor more delicate and more arduous. 

1 Tacitus, Ann. 1,9, 2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 28, 2. 



522 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

The last decade of Augustus’ life was clouded by domestic 
scandals and by disasters on the frontiers of empire. 1 Yet for all 
that, when the end came it found him serene and cheerful. On 
his death-bed he was not plagued by remorse for his sins or by 
anxiety for the Empire. He quietly asked his friends whether he 
had played well his part in the comedy of life. 2 There could be 
one answer or none. Whatever his deserts, his fame was secure 
and he had made provision for his own immortality. 3 

During the Spanish wars, when stricken by an illness that 
might easily have been the end of a frail life, Augustus composed 
his Autobiography . Other generals before him, like Sulla and 
Caesar, had published the narrative of their res gestae or recounted 
their life, deeds and destiny for glory or for politics: none can 
have fabricated history with such calm audacity. Other generals 
had their memorial in the trophies, temples or theatres they had 
erected; their mailed statues and the brief inscribed record of 
their public services adorned Augustus’ Forum of Mars Ultor. 
This was the recompense due to ‘boni duces’ after death. 4 Sulla 
had been ‘Felix’, Pompeius had seized the title of ‘Magnus’. 
Augustus, in glory and fortune the greatest of duces and principes , 
intended to outshine them all. At the very moment when he was 
engaged upon the ostensible restoration of the Republic, he con¬ 
structed in the Campus Martius a huge and dynastic monument, 
his own Mausoleum. He may already, in the ambition to per¬ 
petuate his glory, have composed the first draft of the inscription 
that was to stand outside his monument, the Res Gestae; 5 or at 
the least, it may be conjectured that some such document was 
included in the state papers which the Princeps, near to death, 
handed over to the consul Piso in 23 B.c. But earlier versions 
may more easily be surmised than detected. The Res Gestae in 
their final form were composed early in a.d. 13, along with the 
last will and testament, to be edited and published by Tiberius. 6 

This precious document, surviving in provincial copies, bears 
the hall-mark of official truth: it reveals the way in which Augus¬ 
tus wished posterity to interpret the incidents of his career, the 

1 Pliny, NH 7, 149: ‘iuncta deinde tot mala: inopia stipendi, rebellio Illyrici, 
servitiorum dilectus, iuventutis penuria, pestilentia urbis, fames Italiae,’ &c. 

2 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 99, 1: ‘ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commode 
transegisse.’ 

3 Pliny, NH 7, 150: ‘in summa deus ille caelumque nescio adeptus magis an 

meritus.’ 4 Horace, Odes 4, 8, 13 ff. 

5 As argued by E. Kornemann, Klio 11 (1902), 141 ff. and elsewhere; cf. now P-W 
xvi, 217 ff. 

6 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 101, cf. E. Hohl, Klio xxx (1937), 323 ff. 



PAX ET PR INC EPS 523 

achievements and character of his rule. The record is no less 
instructive for what it omits than for what it says. The adver¬ 
saries of the Princeps in war and the victims of his public or 
private treacheries are not mentioned by name but are consigned 
to contemptuous oblivion. Antonius is masked and traduced as 
a faction, the Liberators as enemies of the Fatherland, Sex. 
Pompeius as a pirate. Perusia and the proscriptions are forgotten, 
the coup d'etat of 32 B.c. appears as a spontaneous uprising of all 
Italy, Philippi is transformed into the victory of Caesar's heir and 
avenger alone. 1 Agrippa indeed occurs twice, but much more as 
a date than as an agent. Other allies of the Princeps are omitted, 
save for Tiberius, whose conquest of Illyricum under the auspices 
of Augustus is suitably commemorated. 2 3 

Most masterly of all is the formulation of the chapter that 
describes the constitutional position of the Princeps—and most 
misleading. His powers are defined as legal ana magisterial; 
and he excels any colleague he might have, not in potest as y but 
only in auctoritas * Which is true as far as it goes—not very far. 
Auctoritas , however, does betray the truth, for auctoritas is also 
potentia. There is no word in this passage of the tribunicia potest as 
which, though elsewhere modestly referred to as a means of 
passing legislation, nowhere betrays its formidable nature and 
cardinal role in the imperial system—‘summi fastigii vocabulunT. 
Again, there is nowhere in the whole document even a hint of 
the imperiumproconsulare in virtue of which Augustus controlled, 
directly or indirectly, all provinces and all armies. Yet these 
powers were the twin pillars of his rule, firm and erect behind 
the flimsy and fraudulent Republic. In the employment of the 
tribunes’ powers and of imperium the Princeps acknowledges his 
ancestry, recalling the dynasts Pompeius and Caesar. People and 
Army were the source and basis of his domination. 

Such were the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. It would be impru¬ 
dent to use the document as a sure guide for history, petulant 
and pointless to complain of omission and misrepresentation. No 
less vain the attempt to discover ultimate derivation and exact 
definition as a literary form. 4 While the Princeps lived, he might, 

1 Res Gestae 2: ‘[et] postea helium inferentis rei publicae | vici b[is a]cie.’ 

2 lb. 30. Note also the prominence of the naval expedition in A.D. 5, commanded 
by Tiberius, though his name is not mentioned (ib. 26). 

3 Ib. 34. 

4 As Mommsen observed (in his edition of 1883, p. vi), ‘arcana imperii in tali 
scriptione nemo sanus quaeret.’ On the nature and purpose of the Res Gestae, cf. 
the edition of J. Gag<£ (Paris, 1935), 23 ff. Dessau’s insistence that the inscription 



5 24 PAX ET PRINCEPS 

like other rulers, be openly worshipped as a deity in the provinces 
or receive in Rome and Italy honours like those accorded to gods 
by grateful humanity: to Romans he was no more than the head 
of the Roman State. Yet one thing was certain. When he was 
dead, Augustus would receive the honours of the Founder who 
was also Aeneas and Romulus, and, like Divus Julius y he would be 
enrolled by vote of the Roman Senate among the gods of Rome 
for his great merits—and for reasons of high politics. None the 
less, it will not help to describe the Res Gestae as the title-deeds 
of his divinity.' If explained they must be, it is not with reference 
to the religions and kings of the Hellenistic East but from Rome 
and Roman practice, as a combination between the elogium of 
a Roman general and the statement of accounts of a Roman 
magistrate. 

Like Augustus, his Res Gestae are unique, defying verbal defi¬ 
nition and explaining themselves. From the beginning, from his 
youthful emergence as a revolutionary leader in public sedition 
and armed violence, the heir of Caesar had endured to the end. 
He died on the anniversary of the day when he assumed his first 
consulate after the march on Rome. Since then, fifty-six years had 
elapsed. Throughout, in act and policy, he remained true to him¬ 
self and to the career that began when he raised a private army and 
‘liberated the State from the domination of a faction’. Dux had 
become Princeps and had converted a party into a government. 
For power he had sacrificed everything; he had achieved the height 
of all mortal ambition and in his ambition he had saved and 
regenerated the Roman People. 

was primarily designed to be read by the plebs of Rome, very precisely the clients 
of the Princeps (Klio xxn (1928), 261 ff.), has not always been sufficiently regarded. 

1 As W. Weber, Princeps I (1936). 94. 



APPENDIX: THE CONSULS 

80 B.C.-A.D. 14 

The consular Fasti of the years 509 b.c.-a.d. 14 were edited and published 
in CIL i 2 , Part I (1893), together with the full evidence of the texts, 
epigraphic and literary, from which they derive; and W. Liebenam printed 
a convenient list of the imperial consuls, from 30 b.c. onwards ( Fasti 
Consulates Imperii Romani , Kleine Texte 41 3, 1909). Since then various 
supplements and improvements have accrued. For the period here con¬ 
cerned the most important accession is the Fasti of the Vicomagistri , 
first published by G. Mancini, Bull. Comm, lxiii (1935), 35 ff., whence 
L'ann. ep., 1937, 62; for corrections, cf. A. Degrassi, Bull. Comm, lxiii 
( 1 935 )> *73 By courtesy of Professor Degrassi, the editor of the Fasti Con¬ 
sulates in Inset. It. xm, 1 (forthcoming), the new material is here utilized 
and incorporated (cf. above, pp. 199 f., 235, 243 f.). It is of decisive value 
for the following years : 

39 B.c. C. Cocceius (Balbus), already known as cos. suff. anno incerto 
(CIL i 2 , p. 219), now supersedes L. Cocceius Nerva, previously supposed 
to be the Cocceius of the Fasti Biondiani (ib., p. 65). 

38 B.c. The Cornelius who was cos. suff. in this year acquires a 
praenomen, Lucius, thus disproving the identification with P. Cornelius 
Scipio (for whom cf. 35 b.c.). It is not certain, however, who he was. 

36 b.c. The suffecti are revealed, L. Nonius (Asprenas) and a frag¬ 
mentary name of which enough survives to show that it was Marcius. 

35 b.c. The suffecti P. Cornelius (Scipio) and T. Peducaeus are new. 

32 and 29 B.c. The two Valerii can now be clearly distinguished (for 
earlier difficulties, cf. P1R\ v 94). 

5 B.c. Q. Haterius emerges as cos. suff., and the praenomen of Galba is 
shown to be Gaius, not Servius. 

4 b.c. New suffecti: C. Caelius and Gaius Sulpicius. 

1 b.c. New suffecti : A. Plautius and A. Caecina (Severus). 

What follows does not pretend to be in any sense an edition of a part 
of the Fasti. It is merely an up-to-date list of consuls, designed for the 
convenience of the historical student. The filiation of consuls, where 
known, is given, for it is often a valuable clue to ready identification; 
and cognomina are added, even when they do not occur in the documents 
that attest the consulates of the men in question. 

B.C. 

80 L. Cornelius L. f. Sulla Felix II: Q. Caecilius Q. f. Metellus 
Pius 

79 P. Servilius C. f. Vatia: Ap. Claudius Ap. f. Pulcher 
78 M. Aemilius Q. f. Lepidus: Q. Lutatius Q. f. Catulus 



526 APPENDIX: THE CONSULS 

77 D. Junius D. f. Brutus: Mam. Aemilius Mam. f. Lepidus 
Livianus 

76 Cn. Octavius M. f.: C. Scribonius C. f. Curio 
75 L. Octavius Cn. f.: C. Aurelius M. f. Cotta 
74 L. Licinius L. f. Lucullus: M. Aurelius M. f. Cotta 
73 M.Terentius M.f. Varro Lucullus: C. Cassius L. f. Longinus 
72 L. Gellius L. f. Poplicola: Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus 
71 P. Cornelius P. f. Lentulus Sura: Cn. Aufidius Orestes 
70 Cn. Pompeius Cn. f. Magnus: M. Licinius P. f. Crassus 
69 Q. Hortensius L. f.: Q. Caecilius C. f. Metellus Creticus 
68 L. Caecilius C. f. Metellus: Q. Marcius Q. f. Rex 
67 C. Calpurnius Piso: M\ Acilius M\ f. Glabrio 
66 M\ Aemilius Lepidus: L. Volcacius Tullus 
65 L. Aurelius M. f. Cotta: L. Manlius L. f. Torquatus 
64 L. Julius L. f. Caesar: C. Marcius C. f. Figulus 
63 M. Tullius M. f. Cicero: C. Antonius M. f. 

62 D. Junius M. f. Silanus: L. Licinius L. f. Murena 
61 M. Pupius M. f. Piso Calpurnianus: M. Valerius M. f, 
Messalla Niger 

60 Q. Caecilius Q. f. Metellus Celer: L. Afranius A. f. 

59 C. Julius C. f. Caesar: M. Calpurnius C. f. Bibulus 
58 L. Calpurnius L. f. Piso Caesoninus: A. Gabinius A. f. 

57 P. Cornelius P. f. Lentulus Spinther: Q. Caecilius Q. f. 
Metellus Ncpos 

56 Cn. Cornelius P. f. Lentulus Marcellinus: L. Marcius L. f. 
Philippus 

55 Cn. Pompeius Cn. f. Magnus II: M. Licinius P. f. Crassus II 
54 L. Domitius Cn. f. Ahenobarbus: Ap. Claudius Ap. f. 
Pulcher 

53 Cn. Domitius M. f. Calvinus: M. Valerius Messalla Rufus 
52 Cn. Pompeius Cn. f. Magnus III: Q. Caecilius Q. f 
Metellus Pius Scipio 

51 Scr. Sulpicius Q. f. Rufus: M. Claudius M. f. Marcellus 
50 L. Aemilius M. f. Paullus: C. Claudius C. f. Marcellus 
49 C. Claudius M. f. Marcellus: L. Cornelius P. f. Lentulus 
Crus 

48 C. Julius C. f. Caesar II: P. Servilius P. f. Vatia Isauricus 
47 Q. Fufius Q. f. Calenus: P. Vatinius P. f. 

46 C. Julius C. f. Caesar III: M. Aemilius M. f. Lepidus 
45 C. Julius C. f. Caesar IV (without colleague) 

Q. Fabius Q. f. Maximus: C. Trebonius C. f. 

C. Caninius C. f. Rebilus 



APPENDIX: THE CONSULS 527 

44 C. Julius C. f. Caesar V: M. Antonius M. f. 

P. Cornelius P. f. Dolabella 

43 C. Vibius C. f. Pansa Caetronianus: A. Hirtius A. f. 

C. Julius C. f. Caesar (Octavianus): Q. Pedius (Q. f. ?) 

P. Ventidius P. f.: C. Carrinas C. f. 

42 M. Aemilius M. f. Lepidus II: L. Munatius L. f. Plancus 
41 L. Antonius M. f.: P. Servilius P. f. Vatia Isauricus II 
40 Cn. Domitius M. f. Calvinus II: C. Asinius Cn. f. Pollio 
L. Cornelius L. f. Balbus: P. Canidius P. f. Crassus 
39 L. Marcius L. f. Censorinus: C. Calvisius C. f. Sabinus 
C. Cocceius (Balbus): P. Alfenus P. f. Varus 
38 Ap. Claudius C. f. Pulcher: C. Norbanus C. f. Flaccus 
L. Cornelius: L. Marcius L. f. Philippus 
37 M. Vipsanius L. f. Agrippa: L. Caninius L. f. Gallus 

T. Statilius T. f. Taurus 

36 L. Gellius L. f. Poplicola: M. Cocceius Nerva 
L. Nonius (L. f. Asprenas): Marcius 
35 L. Cornificius L. f.: Sex. Pompeius Sex. f. 

P. Cornelius (P. f. Scipio): T. Peducaeus 
34 M. Antonius M. f. II: L. Scribonius L. f. Libo 

L. Sempronius L. f. Atratinus: Paullus Aemilius L. f. 
Lepidus 

C. Memmius C. f.: M. Herennius 
33 Imp. Caesar Divi f. II: L. Volcacius L. f. Tullus 
L. Autronius P. f. Paetus: L. Flavius 
C. Fonteius C. f. Capito: M. Acilius (M\ f.?) Glabrio 
L. Vinicius M. f.: Q. Laronius 
32 Cn. Domitius L. f. Ahcnobarbus: C. Sosius C. f. 

L. Cornelius: M. Valerius Messalla 

31 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Ill: M. Valerius M. f. Messalla Corvinus 

M. Titius L. f.: Cn. Pompeius Q. f. 

30 Imp. Caesar Divi f. IV: M. Licinius M. f. Crassus 

C. Antistius C. f. Vetus 
M. Tullius M. f. Cicero 
L. Saenius L. f. 

29 Imp. Caesar Divi f. V: Sex. Appuleius Sex. f. 

Potitus Valerius M. f. Messalla 
28 Imp. Caesar Divi f. VI: M. Vipsanius L. f. Agrippa II 
27 Imp. Caesar Divi f. VII: M. Vipsanius L. f. Agrippa III 
26 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus VIII: T. Statilius T. f. Taurus II 
25 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus IX: M. Junius M. f. Silanus 
24 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus X: C. Norbanus C. f. Flaccus 



528 APPENDIX: THE CONSULS 

23 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus XI: A. Terentius A. f. Varro 
Murena 

L. Sestius P. f. Quirinalis: Cn. Calpurnius Cn. f. Piso 

22 M. Claudius M. f. Marcellus Aeserninus: L. Arruntius L. f. 
21 M. Lollius M. f.: Q. Aemilius M\ f. Lepidus 
20 M. Appuleius Sex. f.: P. Silius P. f. Nerva 
19 C. Sentius C. f. Saturninus: Q. Lucretius Q. f. Vespillo 

M. Vinicius P. f. 

18 P. Cornelius P. f. Lentulus Marcellinus: Cn. Cornelius L. f. 
Lentulus 

17 C. Furnius C. f.: C. Junius C. f. Silanus 

16 L. Domitius Cn. f. Ahenobarbus: P. Cornelius P. f. Scipio 

L. Tarius Rufus 

15 M. Livius L. f. Drusus Libo: L. Calpurnius L. f. Piso 
Frugi (Pontifex) 

14 M. Licinius M. f. Crassus: Cn. Cornelius Cn. f. Lentulus 
(Augur) 

13 Ti. Claudius Ti. f. Nero: P. Quinctilius Sex. f. Varus 
12 M. Valerius M. f. Messalla Barbatus Appianus: P. Sulpicius 
P. f. Quirinius 
C. Valgius C. f. Rufus 

C. Caninius C. f. Rebilus: L. Volusius Q. f. Saturninus 
11 Q. Aelius Q. f. Tubero: Paullus Fabius Q. f. Maximus 
10 Africanus Fabius Q. f. Maximus: Iullus Antonius M. f. 

9 Nero Claudius Ti. f. Drusus: T. Quinctius T. f. Crispinus 
(Sulpicianus) 

8 C. Marcius L. f. Censorinus: C. Asinius C. f. Callus 
7 Ti. Claudius Ti. f. Nero II: Cn. Calpurnius Cn. f. Piso 
6 D. Laelius I), f. Balbus: C. Antistius C. f. Vetus 
5 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus XII: L. Cornelius P. f. Sulla 

L. Vinicius L. f. 

Q. Haterius: C. Sulpicius C. f. Galba 
4 C. Calvisius C. f. Sabinus: L. Passienus Rufus 
C. Caelius: Galus Sulpicius 

3 L. Cornelius L, f. Lentulus: M. Valerius M. f. Messalla 
Messallinus 

2 Imp. Caesar Divi f. Augustus XI11: M. Plautius M. f. Silvanus 

L. Caninius L. f. Gallus 

C. Fufius Geminus 
Q. Fabricius 

1 Cossus Cornelius Cn. f. Lentulus: L. Calpurnius Cn. f. Piso 
(Augur) 



APPENDIX: THE CONSULS 


5 2 9 


A.D. 

A. Plautius: A. Caecina (Severus) 

1 C. Caesar Aug. f.: L. Aemilius Paulli f. Paullus 

M. Herennius M. f. Picens 

2 P. Vinicius M. f.: P. Alfenus P. f. Varus 

P. Cornelius Cn. f. (Lentulus) Scipio: T. Quinctius T. f. 
Crispinus Valerianus 

3 L. Aelius L. f. Lamia: M. Servilius M. f. 

P. Silius P. f.: L. Volusius L. f. Saturninus 

4 Sex. Aelius Q. f. Catus: C. Sentius C. f. Saturninus 
Cn. Sentius C. f. Saturninus: C. Clodius C. f. Licinus 

5 L. Valerius Potiti f. Messalla Volesus: Cn. Cornelius L. f. 

Cinna Magnus 

C. Vibius C. f. Postumus: C. Ateius L. f. Capito 

6 M. Aemilius Paulli f. Lepidus: L. Arruntius L. f. 

L. Nonius L. f. Asprenas 

7 Q. Caecilius Q. f. Metellus Creticus Silanus: A. Licinius A. f. 

Nerva Silianus 

: Lucilius Longus 

8 M. Furius P. f. Camillas: Sex. Nonius L. f. Quinctilianus 

L. Apronius C. f.: A. Vibius C. f. Habitus 

9 C. Poppaeus Q. f. Sabinus: Q. Sulpicius Q. f. Camerinus 

M. Papius M. f. Mutilus: Q. Poppaeus Q. f. Secundus 

10 P. Cornelius P. f. Dolabella: C. Junius C. f. Silanus 

Ser. Cornelius Cn. f. Lentulus Maluginensis: Q. Junius 
Blaesus 

11 M\ Aemilius Q. f. Lepidus: T. Statilius T. f. Taurus 
L. Cassius L. f. Longinus 

12 Germanicus Ti. f. Caesar: C. Fonteius C. f. Capito 

C. Visellius C. f. Varro 

13 C. Silius P. f. A. Caecina Largus: L. Munatius L. f. Plancus 

14 Sex. Pompeius Sex. f.: Sex. Appuleius Sex. f. 



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INDEX 

The scope and purpose of the Index is mainly prosopographical, and it is 
drawn up according to getitilicia, save that Augustus, members of his 
family, and Roman emperors are entered under their conventional or most 
familiar names. Names of places are included when important for their 
political allegiance or as the origo of some person: in most cases the bare 
reference is given, without comment. 


Acerrae, 79, 91; honours Gaius and 
Lucius, 472. 

Acilii Glabriones, 500. 

Acilius Glahrio, M. {cos. stiff. 33 B.c.), 
242, 328, 330. 

Actium, Battle of, 276 f.; enhanced by 
propaganda, 297 f. 

Actium, War of, 294 If.; causes, alleged 
and real, 270 f., 275; true character, 
289; as a myth, 440 f.; as an Italian 
victory, 453. 

Administration, imperial, 387 ff.; role 
of knights, 355 ff., 409, 411; of freed- 
men, 354, 410. 

Admirals, of Sex. Pompeius, 228; of 
Octavianus, 230, 236 f., 297; of An- 
tonius, 267 ff., 296; under the Princi¬ 
ple, 397. 

Acclanum, 82, 88, 356, 383. 

Aclia Galla, wife of C. Propertius 
Postumus, 384, 466, 

Aelii Lamiae, of Formiac, 83, 194, 382, 
500. 

Aelius Catus, transplants Getae, 400 f. 

Aclius Catus, Sex. {cos. a. d. 4), 400. 

Aelius Gallus, M., pracfectus Aegypti, 
338,384. 

Aelius Lamia, L., wealthy knight, 8r f. 

Aelius Lamia, L., legate of Augustus in 
Spain, 329, 333; addressed in an Ode 
of Horace, 83. 

Aelius Lamia, L. {cos. a.d. 3), 362, 436, 
437 - 

Aelius Seianus, L., family and origin, 
358, 384; improperly derided by 
Tacitus, 358; his influence and parti¬ 
sans, 384, 437 f., 505; with C. Caesar 
in the East, 428; his fall, 489, 509; 
his alleged virtues, 488. 

Aemilia, second wife of Pompeius 
Magnus, 31 f. 

Aemilia Lepida, betrothed to L. Caesar 
and married to Quirinius, 379, 478; 
marries Mam. Aemilius Scaurus, 492; 
organizes a demonstration, 478. 


Aemilia Lepida, great-granddaughter of 
Augustus, 432, 495. 

Aemilia Lepida, wife of Galba, 386. 

Aemilii, 10, 18 f., 26, 69, 242, 244, 376, 
379, 422 , 423 , 49L 493, 494, 495, 
5 ”- 

Aemilius Lepidus, M\ {cos. 66 B.c.), 22. 

Aemilius Lepidus, M\ {cos. a.d. ii), 
433- 

Aemilius Lepidus, M. {cos. 78 B.c.), 
17, 28 f., 89, 148. 

Aemilius Lepidus, M. {cos. 46 b.c.), 69, 
94, 96, 97, 104, 126, 382, 482; in 
alliance with Antonius, 109; his pro¬ 
vinces, 110; behaviour in 43 b.c., 158, 
159, 160, 163, 164 ff., 173, 178 ff.; 
a defence of his conduct, 180; de¬ 
clared a public enemy, 184; Trium¬ 
vir, 188 f.; proscribes his brother, 
192; actions as Triumvir, 202, 207, 
208, 209, 217, 221 f.; in Sicily, 231 f.; 
fall of, 231; remains pontifex maxi- 
mus, 447; death, 469; character, 165 
f.; style of politics, 230; use of 
humanitarian language, 158 ff.; fa¬ 
mily and kin, 69, 109, 230; descen¬ 
dants, 298, 494. 

Aemilius Lepidus, M., son of the 
Triumvir, 230; conspiracy of, 298, 
494- 

Aemilius Lepidus, M. {cos. a.d. 6), his 
birth and eminence, 420, 422, 517 ; 
in Illyricum and in Hispania Citerior, 
433 438; his daughter, 438; as 

‘capax imperii’, 433. 

Aemilius Lepidus, M., brother-in-law 
of Caligula, 494. 

Aemilius Lepidus, Paullus {cos. 34 b.c.), 
patrician partisan of Octavianus, 229, 
237 f.; completes the Basilica Aemilia, 
241, 256; as censor, 339, 402; his two 
wives, 378, 422; his sons, 422, 433. 

Aemilius Lepidus, Q. {cos. 21 B.c.), 371. 

Aemilius Paullus, L. {cos. 50 B.c.), 41, 
69, 164, 192, 197. 



536 INDEX 


Aemilius Paullus, L. (cos. a.d. i), 422, 
494; conspiracy and death of, 430, 
432* 

Aemilius Scaurus, Mam. (cos. suff. under 
Tiberius), noble birth and vices of, 
374; marries Aemilia Lepida, 492 f. 

Aemilius Scaurus, M. (cos. 115 B.c.), 20. 

Aemilius Scaurus, M., stepbrother of 
Sex. Pompeius, 228, 269, 299, 349 f., 
377; his son, 492. 

Aeneas, and Augustus, 462 ff., 470, 524. 

Acneid , as an allegorical poem, 462 f. 

Aerarium , 107, 410. 

Aerarium militate , 352. 

Aesernia, 289. 

Afranius, L. (cos. 60 u.c.), 5, 31, 35, 
45, 94, 163, 498; origin and career, 
31 f., 396 f.; his consulate, 33, 35, 
374;? proconsul of Cisalpina, 35. 

Afranius Burrus, Sex., praefectus prae~ 
torio, 502. 

Africa, in relation to Marius, Pompeius 
and Caesar, 75 f., 82; in 44 b.c., iio; 
in the Triumviral period, 189, 213, 
233; as a senatorial province, 314, 
326 f., 330, 394; wars under Augustus, 
339, 394, 401; governors, no, 189, 
213, 239, 242, 248, 292, 303, 330, 
339, 401,435, 43«- 

Agricola, see Julius. 

Agriculture, 31, 247, 253 f., 450 f. 

Agrippa, see Vipsanius. 

Agrippa Postumus, 410, 416; his un¬ 
attractive character, 432 f.; relegated 
to an island, 433, 494; executed, 
439 - 

Agrippina, the Elder, 422. 

Agrippina, the Younger, 384, 386, 511. 

Ahenobarbus, see Domitius. 

Alba Longa, 84. 

Albius Tibullus, poet, 460. 

Aletrium, 360. 

Aleuadae, of Larisa, 83. 

Alexander the Great, 54; empire of, 
217, 250; and Pompeius, 30, 54; and 
Octavianus, 305 ; Roman view of, 441. 

Alexander Helios, 261, 265, 300. 

Alfenus Varus, P. (cos. suff. 39 u.c.), 
novus homo , 79, 93, 498; in the Cis¬ 
alpina, 235; as a jurist, 245 ; his origin, 
79, 235. 

Alfidia, mother of Livia Drusilla, 358. 

Allegiance, oaths of, 52, 126, 284 ff. 
473; sworn to Livius Drusus, 285; 
character of in 32 B.c:., 288; sworn to 
Tiberius, 438. 


Allienus, A., Caesarian partisan, 64, 111, 

I 7 L 199 - 

Alps, conquest of, 329, 390. 

Amatius, mob-leader, 99. 

Amici principis y 376, 385. 

Amicitia } 12,47,62, 70, 157,280, 291 f., 

376 , 385. 424 - 

Amitemum, 90. 

Ampius Balbus, T., Pompeian partisan, 

53 - 

Amyntas, King of Galatia, 232, 260, 
271, 296, 338, 393, 476. 

Annaei, of Corduba, 292. 

Annaeus Lucanus, M., 420, 507; sub¬ 
ject of his Pharsaliay 507; quoted, 9, 
205, 287. 

Annaeus, Seneca, L., the Elder, 292, 356. 

Annaeus Seneca, L., the Younger, his 
power and patronage, 502; on mon¬ 
archy, 516; as a viticultor, 451. 

Annius Cimber, adherent of Antonius, 

132- 

Annius Milo, T., 39, 48. 

Annonay 37, 339, 357, 403. 

Antigonus, King of Judaea, 223. 

Antipater, poet from Thessalonica, 460. 

Antipater, of Derbe, 259. 

Antipater the Idumaean, 76, 262. 

Antistius Labeo, perishes at Philippi, 
228. 

Antistius Labeo, M., Republican and 
honest lawyer, 375; his acts of in¬ 
dependence, 482. 

Antistius Vetus, C., proconsul of His- 
pania Ulterior, 64, 

Antistius Vetus, C. (cos. suff. 30 b.c.), 
64, hi, 171, 206, 328, 329; legate of 
Hispania Citerior, 329 f., 332; his 
descendants, 499. 

Antium, conference at, 116. 

Antonia, married to Pythodorus, 262. 

Antonia (Major), 220; married to 
L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, 378, 421. 

Antonia (Minor), married to Drusus, 378; 
her court, 386; her three children, 422. 

Antonii, 19, 493, 494, 495. 

Antoninus Pius, 502. 

Antonius, son of Iullus, the last of his 
line, 494. 

Antonius, C. (cos. 63 b.c.), 62, 65, 81, 
165, 197. 

Antonius, C. (pr. 44 b.c.), 126, 171, 183, 
203. 

Antonius, Iullus (cos. 10 b.c.), 373, 376, 
378, 421, 494; executed, 426; im¬ 
portance of, 427; his son, 494. 



INDEX 


Antonius, L. (cos. 41 b.c.), 115, 116, 
189; his cognomen , 157; in the Peru- 
sine War, 208 ff., 215 \pietas, 157, 208 ; 
his death, 211. 

Antonius, M. (cos. 44 b.c.), family and 
relatives of, 63, 64, 103; early career, 
41, 43, 76, 90, 94 ff, 103 f., 382; after 
the Ides of March, 97 ff.; statesman¬ 
ship, 105, 108 f.; acts and designs, 
108; alleged embezzlement, 107, 131; 
arrangements about provinces in 
44 b.c., 107, no, 115, 170; relations 
with the Liberators, 108, 117 ff.; with 
Octavianus, nsflf., 141 ff.; with 
Cicero, 140 f.; actions in the autumn, 
123 ff.; against the Senate, 162 ff.; 
his legal position, 162, 168, 170; 
Mutina and after, 173 ff.; the Trium¬ 
virate, i88f.; role in proscriptions, 
191 f.; campaign and Battle of 
Philippi, 202 ff.; after Philippi, 214; 
attitude during the Perusine War, 
214 f., 215; peace of Brundisium, 
216 ff.; marriage to Octavia, 219; 
prestige of Antonius, 221 f.; actions 
in 39 37 B.c., 221 ff.; relations with 
Cleopatra, 214b, 260 f., 273 ff., 281; 
organization of the Hast, 259 ff'., 
271 ff., 300 f.; invasion of Media, 
263 f.; ulterior designs, 273 ff.; acta 
of Antonius, 276, 278; breach with 
Octavianus, 276 ff.; testament of 
Antonius, 282; actions in 32 b.c., 
280 ff.; strategy, 294 f.; defeat and 
death, 295 ff.; character and reputa¬ 
tion, 104!'., 121 f., 150, 277, 442; 
descendants, 376, 493 ff. 

Partisans of Antonius, 132, 199 f., 
222, 266 ff., 280 ff., 296, 299 f., 349 f. 

Antonius Musa, physician, 335. 

Apollo, 101,241, 256, 463 ; as protecting 
deity of Augustus, 448, 454. 

Apolloma, Octavianus’ friends at, 129, 
4 f> 3 - 

Appius, see Claudius. 

Appulcii, 289, 382, 496. 

Appuleius, M., quaestor of Asia, 171. 

Appuleius, M. (cos. 20 b.c.), son of 
Octavia, 129, 329, 378. 

Appuleius, Sex., husband of Octavia, 
129. 

Appuleius, Sex. (cos. 29 B.c.), nephew of 
Augustus, 129, 378, 421, 483; pro- 
consul of Spain, 303, 309; legate of 
lllyricum in 8 b.c., 328, 400. 

Appuleius, Sex. (cos. A.D. 14), 421, 496. 


537 

Apronius, L. (cos. stiff, a.d. 8), norm 
homo, 363, 434, 436. 

Aqueducts, Agrippa’s work, 241, 402; 
cura aquarum, 403. 

Aquillius Florus, Antonian partisan, 

299- 

Ara Pads, 304, 389, 470, 473. 

‘Arae Perusinae’, 212. 

Archelaus, King of Cappadocia, 260, 
428. 

Archelaus, ethnarch of Judaea, 399, 476. 

Arelate, 503. 

Aricia, 31, 112, 127, 150. 

Aristocracy, composition and trans¬ 
formation of, 8, 10 ff., 18, 77 ff., 
196 ff., 244 ff., 349 f., 357 ff., 501 ft'.; 
see also Nobiles. 

Armenia, Antonius’ relations with, 224, 
265, 270; after Actium, 301 ; Augus¬ 
tus’ policy, 388, 428. 

Armies, control of, 35 f., 325 ; in 44 b.c., 
102 f., nof.; in 43 b.c. , 165 f.; by 
the Triumvirs, 189; after Actium, 
302 f.; in 27 b.c:., 326 ff.; in a.d. 14, 

437 f- 

Armies, private, 15, 28, 75, 82, 92, 125, 
155, 1 bo, 286, 524. 

Army, the Roman, 15 ; ranks and officers, 
70 f., 353 ff.; size of, 389; alleged 
national character of, 456 f.; re¬ 
cruiting, 457 f.; specialization in, 355, 
395 f.; removed from politics by 
Augustus, 353; loyal to the dynasty, 
476. 

Arpinum, 86. 

Arretium, 83, 87, 125, 129, 289; 

statues and elogia at, 473. 

Arruntii, 194, 425, 497, 499. 

Arruntius, proscribed, 194. 

Arruntius, L. (cos. 22 B.c.), 227, 282, 
297 , 33°> 339 , 372, 434 ; Pompeian 
connexion of, 425, 434, 499. 

Arruntius, L. (cos. a.d. 6), his Pompeian 
connexion, 425; regarded as ‘capax 
imperii’, 433!'.; his adopted son, 
Camillus, 377, 425. 

Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, L. 
(cos. a.d. 32), descendant of Pom- 
peius, 377, 425, 497. 

Artavasdcs, King of Armenia, 264 f., 
270. 

Asculum, 71, 86, 357. 

Asia, aristocracy of, 261 f., 365, 476, 
490, 506; in the Triumviral period, 
223, 259 ff.; as a senatorial province, 
328, 394, 395; worship of Augustus, 



INDEX 


S3* 

473 f>; governors, 103, in, 136, 220, 
266 f., 303, 395, 398, 477. 

Asinii, from Teate Marrucinorum, 382, 
500. 

Asinius, Herius, leader of the Marru- 
cini, 91. 

Asinius Gallus, C. (cos. 8 b.c.), 219, 
375, 395, 439; marries Vipsania, 378, 
512 ; alleged ambitions, 433 f.; his 
sons, 500. 

Asinius Marcellus, M. (cos. A.n. 104), 
500. 

Asinius Pollio, C. (cos. 40 b.c..), his 
origin, and career, 5 f., 91 f.; his 
allegiance, 5, 121, 166, 180; in Spain, 
no, 166; observations on the Battle 
of Mutina, 174 ; joins Antonius, 180; 
his conduct defended, 180b; in the 
proscriptions, 193; in 42 b.c., 202; in 
the Cisalpina, 189, 207 f., 252, 462 ; 
relations with Virgil, 218 f., 252 b, 
460; with Gallus, 75, 252; in the 
Perusine War, 209 fT.; dictum about 
Octavianus, 211; his consulate, 218 f., 
369; at Brundisium, 217; and the 
Fourth Eclogue , 218 ft'.; in Mace¬ 
donia, 222 f.; his triumph, 222, 241 ; 
not at Tarentum, 225; his public 
library, 241; attitude in 32 b.c:., 291; 
under the Principate, 320, 482, 512; 
his death, 512. 

His character, 5 f.; dislikes Cicero, 
166, 318, 483; dislikes Plancus, 31S, 
512; as a diplomat, 165, 180, 217, 
245; as a barrister, 193, 483; as a 
poet, 252; his letters quoted, 6; 
Horace’s Ode quoted, 6, 8; his 
Histories , 5 f., 484 ft'. ; on the year 
60 b.c,, 8; on Caesar, 6, 42, 484; on 
Cicero, 147, 192; on literary style, 
484; on history, 484; on ‘Patavinitas’, 
486; family and descendants, 500. 

Asisium, 360, 361,466. 

Asturia, 332, 401. 

Ateius Capito, C. (cos. suff. a.d. 5), 
novus homo , 375; religious activities, 
382; curator aquarum, 403; as a 
political lawyer, 411 f., 482 f. 

Atia, niece of Caesar, 35, 36, 112, 378. 

Atilii, 84. 

Atina, 89, 194. 

Atius Balbus, M., grandfather of Au¬ 
gustus, 31, 112. 

Atticus, see Pomponius. 

Attius Tullus, Volscian king, 83. 

Attributi , 457, 


Auctoritas , 3, 10, 35, 134, 142, 152 b, 
160, 164, 278, 320, 322, 333, 345, 
370, 411, 443, 468, 519, 523. 

Aufidius, T., publicanus and senator, 81. 

Aufidius Lurco, of Fundi, 358. 

Augustales, 472. 

Augustus, the Kmperor, his origin and 
political debut, 112ft.; demagogic 
activities, u6ff., 119b; his first 
march on Rome, 125 ft., 141b; 
origin of his party, 127 ft., 201, 234 ft., 
349 ft.; political funds, 130b; rela¬ 
tions with Cicero, 114, 134, 141 ft., 
181 ft.; his position legalized, 167; 
in and after the War of Mutina, 173 ft, 
181 ft.; and the consulate, 182b, 
185b; Triumvir, 188; role in pro¬ 
scriptions, 191; campaign of Philippi, 
202 ft.; Perusine War, 207 ft.; Brun¬ 
disium, 217 ft.; in 38 37 b.c., 225; 
his marriage to Li via, 229, 340; the 
Bellutn Siculum, 230 ft.; in lllyricum, 
240. 

Breach with Antonius, 276 ft.; 
position in 32 b.c., 277 b; iuratio 
Italiae, 284 ft.; Actium, 294 ft.; powei 1 
after Actium, 307 ft.; the settlement of 
28 27 B.c., 313 ft.; in the West, 331ft.; 
the new settlement, 333 ft.; acts in 
22 B.c,, 339; in the East, 371, 388; 
moral programme, 443 ft.; in Gaul 
and Spain, 388 b; after 12 B.c., 
391b; dynastic ambitions for his 
grandsons, 416 ft.; position after 6 
B.c., 419 ft.; disgrace of Julia, 426 f.; 
adoption of Tiberius, 431 ; last years, 
431 ft. ; P\st acts, 433, 438 b; death 
and deification, 438 b, 521b; cult, 
469,524. 

His constitutional powers, 313 ft., 
336ft., 406, 412; provincia , 313 b, 
326 b, 329 f., 373, 393 ft.; control of 
elections, 325, 370 ft; relations with 
the Senate, 313 ft., 370, 406, 408, 
410 f.; with senatorial provinces, 314, 
330, 336, 394 b, 406; administrative 
reforms, 401 ft., 410 b; moral re¬ 
forms, 443 ft. 

His real power, 2 f., 322 f., 370, 
404 f.; in relation to the Roman 
Commonwealth, 520 ft.; as a party 
leader, 288, 322 b, 340, 349 ft., 

419 ft., 473 ft. (see also Clicntela ); 
relations with the nobiles, 238 b, 291, 
328, 368, 372 f., 376 ft., 382, 404 b, 
419 ft., 453, 490 ft., 510b; with 



INDEX 


539 


knights and novi homines, 129 ff. 
235 ff., 289 f., 328, 349 ff., 375 ff. 
453 ff.; with the plebs, 322, 370 
468 ff., 478!.; with Italy, 284 ff. 
359 ff., 449 f., 453 f., 465 f., 472 f. 
with the Empire, 323, 365b, 473 ff. 
476 f., 521. 

His character, 2, 113, 340, 346!'., 
454, 479 ff'.; unduly idealized, 2 ff.; 
writings, 484, 522 ff ; literary tastes, 
460, 484 f.; opinion about Cato, 506. 

Ilis family and kinsmen, 83, 112, 
127 ff., 150, 340 f., 378 f., 415 ff, 421, 
426, 431, 432, etc.; descendants, 
493 ff.; his marriages, 189, 213, 229. 

Aulienus, Sex., equestrian officer from 
Forum Julii, 367. 

Aurelia, mother of Caesar, 25. 

Aurelii Cottae, 19. 

Aurelius Cotta, L. (cos. 65 B.C.), 64, 
135. * 6 4- 

Autobiography of Augustus, 176 f., 191, 
204 f., 225, 332, 4(14, 484, 522. 

Autronius Paetus, L. (cos. sujf. 33 n.c.), 
242, 327; proconsul of Africa, 292, 
303, 498. 

Auxilia, importance of, 457. 

Auximum, 90, 92, 478. 

Avectius, Nervian, 475. 

Baetica, not a province in 27 iu\, 326; 
date of origin, 395. 

Balbus, see Cornelius. 

Balkans, Roman conquests in, 222 f., 
240, 308, 390 f.; see also Macedonia, 
Moesia. 

Barbarius Philippus, escaped slave and 
senator, 196. 

Barbatius Pollio, M., quaestor of An- 
tonius, 196. 

Bathyllus, favourite of Maecenas, 342, 
486. 

Bellum Italicum , 16 f., 22, 28, 86 ff., 
286, 359, 449. 

Bellum Pannonicum , 390. 

Bellum Siculum, 230 ff 

Bellum Thracicum , of L. Piso, 391, 398. 

Beneventum, 84. 

Betilienus Bassus, P., from Alctrium, 360. 

Bibulus, see Calpurnius. 

Billienus, C., remarkable novus homo , 

> 93- 

Birth, a qualification for office, ir, 
374 ff-1 pride of, 68, 360 f., 377,442f.; 
obscurity of birth, 78, 81, 150 f., 
350- 


Bithynia, allotted in 44 b.c., 103 ; under 
Antonius, 266; a senatorial province, 
328; governors, 103, 111, 217, 220, 
266, 303. 

Bononia, allegiance of, 285, 465. 

Bourgeoisie, characteristics of, 360, 
453 ff.; see also Municipia. 

Britain, rumours about, 332. 

Brixia, 79, 251, 363; notorious prudery 
455- 

Brundisium, pact of, 217 ff. 

Brutus, see Junius. 

Buildings, of viri triumphales, 241, 402; 
of Augustus, 404. 

Burebistas, Dacian king, 74. 

Caecilia Attica, 238, 257. 345- 

Caecilia Metella, wife of Scaurus and 
of Sulla, 20, 31. 

Caecilia Metella, daughter of Creticus, 
22, 36, 43, 64. 

Caecilia Metella, wife of the son of 
Lentulus Spinther, 45. 

Caccilii Metelli, 12, 20 ff., 26, 32, 33, 
36, 43 ff., 68, 85, 86, 163, 198, 237, 
244,423,491. 

Caccilius Bassus, Q., Pompeian, 103, 

l V\ 

Caecilius Metellus, proscribed, 198. 

Caccilius Metellus, Antonian partisan, 
269, 299, 377. 

Caecilius Metellus, L. (cos. 68 B.C.), 
43- 

Caecilius Metellus, Q., Augustan sena- 
tor, 377. 

Caecilius Metellus Celer, Q. (cos. 60 
B.c.), 5, 20, 23, 43 ; as praetor, 32; as 
governor of Cisalpina, 74; as consul, 
33 ff.; his letter to Cicero, 45. 

Caecilius Metellus Creticus, Q. (cos. 

69 b.c.), 21, 23, 43. 

Caecilius Metellus Creticus Silanus, Q. 

^ (cos. a.d. 7), 423, 437, 491. 

Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, Q. 

(cos. 143 B.c.), 20, 444. 

Caecilius Metellus Nepos, Q. (cos. 57 
b.c.), 23, 32, 36, 43. 

Caecilius Metellus Pius, Q. (cos. 80 

B.c.), 20, 21, 22, 36, 43. 

Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio, Q. (cos. 
52 B.c.), his origin and character, 36, 
40, 45; his consulate, 40; kills L. 

Ticida, 63 ; death, 50. 

aecina, agent of Octavianus, 131, 142, 
208. 

Caecina, A., Etruscan nobleman, 82. 



INDEX 


Caecina Severus, A. (cos. suff. 1 b.c.), 
363 ; legate of Moesia, 394, 399,436 ;on 
the Rhine, 437; his descendants, 500. 

Caecinae, of Volaterrae, 83. 

Caelius, C. (cos. suff. 4 B.c.), 362. 

Caelius Rufus, M., parentage of, 63; 
origin, 88; defended by Cicero, 150; 
feud with Ap. Fulcher, 41 ; disillusion 
and death, 53 ; talents as an orator, 63, 
245- 

Caen is, freedvvoman of Antonia, 386. 

Caepasii, small-town orators, 81. 

Caesar, see Julius. 

Caescnnius Lento, Antonian partisan, 
116, 132. 

Caetronianus, Etruscan cognomen of 
Pansa, 90. 

Cafo, ex-centunon, 79, 116, 126. 

Calenus, see Fufius. 

Cales, 90, 193, 194, 289, 362. 

Calidius, M., important senator, 39. 

Caligula, jests of, 357 f.; literary pre¬ 
ferences, 489; ashamed of Vipsanian 
blood, 499; married to Lollia Paul- 
lina, 499. 

Callaecia, 401. 

Calpetanus Statius Rufus, C., Augustan 
senator, 361. 

Calpurnia, wife of Caesar, 36, 98. 

Calpurnia, wife of Messalla Corvinus, 
423. 

Calpurnii, 19, 85, 163, 244, 382, 423, 
436 f., 496 f. 

Calpurnii Bibuli, 492. 

Calpurnius Bibulus, L., Republican and 
Antonian, 198, 206, 222, 231; gover¬ 
nor of Syria, 268, 282. 

Calpurnius Bibulus, M. (cos. 59 B.c.), 
24, 34, 39, 44 f.; his wife, 24, 58. 

Calpurnius Crassus Frugi Licinianus, 
C., illustrious conspirator, 497. 

Calpurnius Piso, C. (cos. 67 b.c.), enemy 
of Pompeius, 35. 

Calpurnius Piso, C. (cos. a.d. hi), 497. 

Calpurnius Piso, Cn. (cos. 23 b.c.), with 
the Liberators, 199, 206; accepts the 
consulate, 334 f., 368. 

Calpurnius Piso, Cn. (cos. 7 B.c.), son 
of the preceding, and friend of 
^ Tiberius, 424, 433, 435. 

Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, L. (cos. 
58 b.c.), father-in-law of Caesar, 36; 
feud with Cicero, 135; as censor, 66, 
135; attitude during the Civil Wars, 
62, 136; in 44 b.c., 98, 117, 118, 134; 
during the War of Mutina, 164, 167, 


168, 169, 170, 172; disappears from 
record, 197; his policy defended, 136; 
character and philhellenic tastes, 
135 f., 149 f., 517; family and ex¬ 
traction, 74, 150, 357; descendants, 
424, 434, 497. 

Calpurnius Piso Frugi, L. (ros. 15 B.c.), 
373, 375* 379. 392; his career, 398; 
in Galatia, 391, 398; Helium Thraci- 
cum t 391, 398; proconsul of Asia, 
398 ; praefectus urbi , 404, 436; politi¬ 
cal and social importance of, 424; 
connexions, 424, 434, 437, 496; 

descendants, 496 ff., 500; character 
and bibulous habits, 436; as a patron 
of literature, 460. 

Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus, L., 
adopted by Galba, 497. 

Calventius, of Placentia, maternal grand¬ 
father of L. Piso, 74, 150, 357. 

Calvisius Sabinus, C. (cos. 39 B.c.), 91, 

93, in, 199 f., 236 f., 255, 308, 327; 
his pietas towards Caesar, 221 ; in 
Africa, no; his consulate, 221 ; as an 
admiral, 230; his priesthoods, 238; 
attacks Antonius, 283 ; in Spain, 292, 
302 f.; repairs the Via Latina, 402; 
his origin, 199; descendants, 499 f. 

Calvus, see Licinius. 

Camillus, 18, 305. 

Campania, Roman nobles from, 84; 
Marian and Caesarian partisans, 90 f., 
193 f.; relatives of Velleius Pater¬ 
culus, 383. 

Canidia, witch, 200. 

Canidius, in Cyprus, 200. 

Canidius Crassus, P. (cos. suff. 40 B.c.), 
189, 220, 268; his campaign towards 
the Caucasus, 224, 264; in 35-33 
u.c., 265, 266; against Cleopatra, 
280; in the War of Actium, 294,296 f.; 
death, 300, 480; his remarkable 

career, 397; origin and name, 200 f.; 
no descendants, 498. 

Caninius Gallus, L. (cos. 37 b.c.), 
partisan of Antonius, 200, 266, 498. 

Caninius Rebilus, C. (cos. suff. 45 B.c.), 

94, hi, 165, 236. 

Caninius Rebilus, C. (cos. suff. 12 B.C.), 
373- . 

Cannutius, Ti. (tr. pi. 44 b.c.), 123, 125, 
132, 136, 212. 

Cantabri, 332. 

Canusium, 361. 

Capital, guaranteed by Caesar, 52 f.; 
attacked by the Triumvirs, 195, 355; 



INDEX 


endangered in 32 B.c., 290; favour¬ 
able to the Principate, 351, 451 f., 

47 6 - 

Cappadocia, King of, 260, 301. 

Capua, 84. 

Carfulenus, D., equestrian officer and 
senator, 132, 235. 

Carisius, P., partisan of Octavianus, 
236, 376; legate of Hispania Ulterior, 
329, 332; his brutal character, 332, 

477 - 

Caristanius Fronto, C., of Pisidian An¬ 
tioch, 367. 

Carrinas, C., Marian partisan, 65. 

Carrinas, C. (cos. suff. 43 b.c.), Caesar¬ 
ian partisan, 65, 90, m, 188, 199, 
234, 327; in Spain, 213; in Gaul, 
292, 302 f.; his origin and name, 90, 
93 ; no descendants, 498. 

Carthage, fall of, in relation to Roman 
history, 154, 249; wars against Car¬ 
thage promote novi homines, 19, 238, 
244; altar o {gens Augusta at, 473, 

Cassii, 19, 492. 

Cassius of Parma, assassin, 95, 228, 
269, 300. 

Cassius, of Patavium, conspirator, 478. 

Cassius Longinus, C. (pr. 44 b.c.), 57, 
95; after the Ides of March, 101, 
ii6ff, 119; in the East, 124, 171 f., 
177; campaign of Philippi, 203 ff.; 
his death, 205 ; character, 57, 184; his 
dientela among the Transpadani, 
465; his brothers, 64; wife, 69, 492; 
descendants, 492; see also M. Junius 
Brutus, Liberators. 

Cassius Longinus, C. (cos. suff. a.d. 30), 
492. 

Cassius Longinus, L. ( t.r. pi. 44 b.c.), 
64,132. 

Cassius Longinus, L. (cos. a.d. ii), 492. 

Cassius Longinus, L. (cos. a.d. 30), 492. 

Cassius Longinus, Q. (tr. pi. 49 b.c.), 
Caesarian, 43, 64. 

Cassius Severus, the orator, 375, 483; 
his character, 486; on P. Vitellius and 
Paullus Fabius Maximus, 487; pun¬ 
ished, 487; works revived, 489. 

Castricius, informer, 483. 

Castricius, A., son of Myriotalentus, 
, 3 6 ?- 

Catilina, see Sergius. 

Catilinarians, punishment of, 25 f.; on 
Caesar’s side, 66; in the towns of 
Italy, 89. 

Catullus, see Valerius. 


541 

Catulus, see Lutatius. 

Censorship, in Roman politics, 41, 66; 
suitable functions of, 444; revived in 
22 B.c., 339. 

Centurions, 70, 79 f., 243, 395; pro¬ 
motion to equestrian rank under the 
Principate, 353. 

Chumstinctus, Nervian, 475. 

Cicero, see Tullius. 

Cilicia, no longer a province, 260, 271 f. 

Cilicia Aspera, given to Cleopatra, 260, 
271 ; cities founded there, 281. 

Cilicia Campestris, joined to the pro¬ 
vince of Syria, 326. 

Cingulum, 31, 90. 

Cilnii, of Arretium, 83, 129 f. 

Cispius, M., condemned senator, 81. 

Citizenship, spread of, 74 f., 79, 86 ff., 
262, 365 ff., 405. 

Civil service, need for, 331; growth of, 
355 ff., 409. 

Civil War, Roman distaste for, 2, 180, 
184; recurrent features of, 9, 249 f.; 
results of, 440, 507, 510, 515; effects 
on private morality, 249; on political 
morality, 64, 157 f.; on language, 154, 
156; on the study of history, 250. 

Cinna, see Cornelius. 

Claudia, exemplar of female virtue, 444. 

Claudia, wife of Brutus, 45, 58. 

Claudia, wife of Cn. Pompeius (the son 
of Magnus), 45. 

Claudia, daughter of P. Clodius, 189, 
209. 

Claudia, Appia, wife of Quirinius, 379, 
425 - 

Claudia Pulchra, wife of P. Quinctilius 
Varus, 421, 434. 

Claudii, 10, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 34, 69, 
70, 84, 163, 229, 242, 244, 285, 340, 
345 . 376 , 493 f. 

Claudii Marcelli, 19, 43 f., 94, no, 163, 
198, 237, 244, 382, 423, 491, 496. 

Claudius, the Emperor, betrothed to 
Livia Medullina, 422; to Urgulania, 
385, 422; not liked by his family, 433 ; 
his Antonian blood, 495; the manner 
of his accession, 415; policy towards 
the chieftains of Comata, 501 f., and 
towards Greeks, 506; on Paullus 
Fabius Persicus, 511; as a historian, 
6; the Oratio Claudi Caesar is, 359,501. 

Claudius Balbillus, Ti., eminent Greek, 
506. 

Claudius Caecus, Ap. (censor 312 B.c.), 
84, 285, 494; his progeny, 378. 



INDEX 


Claudius Cleonymus, Ti., Greek in 
equestrian service, 506. 

Claudius Dmippus, Ti., Greek in eques¬ 
trian service, 506. 

Claudius Drusus, Nero (cos. 9 B.c.), see 
Drusus. 

Claudius Marcellus, C. (cos. 50 b.c.), 
42, 43, 45, 112, 164, 197; neutral in 
the Civil War, 62, 64; relations with 
Octavianus, 142, 182; death, 217; 
character, 128; family connexions, 
112, 134. 

Claudius Marcellus, C. (cos. 49 B.c.), 
43 » 45 * 

Claudius Marcellus, C., nephew of 
Augustus, 219, 341, 342, 347, 369, 
378, 491; death of, 389. 

Claudius Marcellus, M. (cos. 51 b.c.), 
40 , 43 , 45 * 

Claudius Marcellus Aeserninus, M. 
(cos. 22 B.c.), 64, 339, 423, 491, 5 1 2. 

Claudius Nero, Ti., Caesarian and 
Republican, 69, 98; in the Bellum 
Perusinum , 210, 383; in Greece, 21s, 
227; divorces his wife Livia Drusilla, 
229. 

Claudius Nero, Ti. (cos. 13 b.c.), see 
Tiberius, the Emperor. 

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (cos. 143 b.c.), 
60, 494. 

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (cos. 79 B.c.), 20, 
21. 

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (cos. 54 B.c.), 20, 
2 3. 3h, 38, 39, 61, 62, 69, no; his 
censorship, 41, 66; his feuds, 63; his 
character, 45 ; his brothers and sisters, 
20, 23; his two daughters, 45; kins¬ 
folk and descendants, 20, 23, 45, 229, 
426. 

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (cos. 38 B.c.), 
229, 237, 238, 239, 327, 368; pro- 
consul of Spain, 292; descendants and 
relatives, 423, 426, 493. 

Claudius Pulcher, Ap., paramour of 
Julia, 426, 493. 

Claudius Pulcher, C. (pr. 56 b.c.), 20, 

23- 

Clementia, 51, 65, 159 f., 299, 442, 480. 

Cleon, the brigand, 259. 

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, 6, 214, 259; 
relations with Caesar, 275 ; donations 
by Antonius, 260, 270, 300 f.; her 
rapacity, 260, 270; relations with 
Antonius and the problem of their 
marriage, 261, 273 f., 277, 280; char¬ 
acter and ambitions, 274; alleged 


designs, 283; relative unimportance, 
274; end of Cleopatra, 298 f.; the 
legend, 299; her children, 261, 270, 
300. 

Cleopatra Selene, 261, 300. 

Clientele 2, 15, 24, 26, 30, 73 ff., 261 ff., 
285 f., 288 f., 300, 322, 365, 366, 
404 f., 473 ff. 

Client kings, function of, 259, 271 ff., 
300 f., 365 f., 476 f.; status of, 412; 
their part in the cult of Augustus, 474. 

Clients, duties towards, 57, 70, 157. 

Clodia, wife of Metellus Celer, 20, 23, 
74 , 149 * 

Clodia, wife of L. Lucullus, 20, 21, 23. 

Clodia, wife of Q. Marcius Rex, 20, 23. 

Clodius Pulcher, P. (tr. pi. 58 b.c.), 20, 
23, 24, 33 f.; his death, 36; friends 
and allies, 60; shocking vices, 149; 
as a demagogue, 459; his daughter, 
189, 209. 

Clucntius Habitus, A., from Larinum, 
82. 

Clusinius, of the Marrucini, 193. 

Cluvius, C., adlected inter consulares , 
350 . 

Cnidus, Caesarians from, 76, 262. 

Cocceii, 200, 267, 282, 382, 385, 500, 
504 , 5 i 8 * 

Cocceius Iialbus, C. (cos. suff. 39 B.c.), 
Antonian, 200, 267. 

Cocceius Nerva, L., Antonian, 200, 208, 
225, 267. 

Cocceius Nerva, M. (cos. suff. 36 b.c.), 
Antonian, 200, 266, 267. 

Cocceius Nerva, M. (cos. a.d. 71), see 
Nerva, the Emperor. 

Coehus Caldus, C. (cos. 94 b.c.), a novus 
homo , 94. 

Cognomina, foreign, 84; adopted to 
show political loyalty, 157; revived 
among the aristocracy, 377. 

Coinage, of Augustus, 323, 406. 

Coins, as propaganda, 155, 160, 469 f. 

Collegia iuvenum , 384, 445 f. 

Colonies, military, 88, in, 125, 196, 
233, 287, 352; in the provinces, 79 f., 
292, 366, 367; organic function of, 
366 f., 474, 478; military value 

478. 

Comites , 385. 

Commands, extraordinary, 29, 36, 37, 
115 f., 160, 168, 178, 315, 393. 

Committees, administrative,403 f.; judi¬ 
cial, 408 f. 

Concilia , provincial, 474, 477. 



INDEX 543 


Concordia, 363. 

Concordia ordinum , 16, 81, 153, 321; 
achieved by Augustus, 364. 

Confiscation, by Caesar, 76 f.; by the 
Triumvirs, 194 ff.; by Octavianus, 
35 °- 

Consensus Italiae , 153, 161, 169, 286, 
321, 364. 

Considius, P., experienced centurion, 
355 - 

Consilia, of the Princeps, 408 ff. 

Conspiracies, against Augustus, 298, 
333 f-. 4 i 4 , 426 f., 432, 444, 47«i.in 
general, 479. 

Constitution, the Roman, character of, 
11 f., 152 f., 370; usefulness of, 38, 
316, 325; respect for, 101, 316; re¬ 
garded as obsolete in 32 B.C., 285; 
Augustus in relation to, 314^'., 
520 ff.; a facade, 11 f., 340. 

Consulars, importance of, 10, 388; in 
the Sulian oligarchy, 20 ff.; on the 
side of Pompeius, 44 f.; Caesarians, 
61 f.; total in 48 b.c., 61; in Decem¬ 
ber 44 b.c., 164 f.; in December 
43 B.c., 197; in 33 b.c., 243 f.; in 
27 B.c., 327 f., 388; controlled by 
Augustus, 388 f.; as proconsuls, 
326 ff., 383; as legates of Augustus, 
327, 330, 393 ff.; employment in 
Rome, 403 L; as counsellors, 407 f., 
411 ff.; a political nuisance, 388. 

Consulate importance of, 11, 24 b, 
368 ff.; imperium y 162, 315, 326, 330; 
controlled by Pompeius, 36; under 
the Triumvirs, 188, 199 b, 243 ff., 
372; controlled by Augustus, 325, 
370 ff.; age for, 369; qualifications, 
374 ff.; elections, 370 f. 

Consuls, after Sulla, 22; in the last 
years of the Republic, 94; under 
Caesar’s Dictatorship, 94 f.; Trium- 
viral, 188 f., 199 f., 243 f., 327 f.; in 
33 B.c., 242; in 27-23 n.c., 325; in 
28-19 b.c., 372; in 18-13 B.c., 373; 
in 15 b.c.-a.d. 3, 362; in a.d. 5-10, 
434 b; suffecti , 197, 373, 420; alien 
nomenclature of consuls, 93, 199 b, 

^ 244, 362. 

Coponii, of Tibur, 193. 

Coponius, proscribed, 193. 

Coponius, procurator of Judaea, 357, 
476 . 

Coponius, C., enemy of Plancus, 283, 
379 . 

Coptos, list of soldiers at, 457. 


Corduba, 292, 356, 420, 478, 483, 507. 

Corfinium, 87, 90, 360. 

Coriolanus, see Marcius. 

Corioli, 85. 

Cornelia, daughter of Mctellus Scipio, 
22. 36, 40. 

Cornelia, the eldest daughter of Sulla, 

25, 279- 

Cornelia, daughter of Scribonia, 229, 
238; her sons, 422; exemplar of 
female virtue, 444, 467. 

Cornelia, wife of C. Calvisius Sabinus 
(cos. a.I). 26), 498. 

Cornelia Fausta, daughter of Sulla, 39; 
242; alleged adultery with C. Sal- 
lustius Crispus, 250. 

Cornchi, 10, 18, 69, 163, 198, 244, 423, 
491. 

Comelii Lentuli, 18, 32, 44 b, 69, 198, 
373 * 376 , 377 * 423* 436 C, 491, 497. 

Cornelii Scipiones, 12, 18, 30, 43, 69, 85, 
237, 238, 242, 376, 377, 423, 
49 i* 493 - 

Cornelius, the scribe, 249. 

Cornelius, L. (cos. suff. 38 b.c.), 235, 
243. 

Cornelius, L. (cos. suff. 32 b.c.), 279. 

Cornelius Balbus, L., from Gades, 44, 
97, 106, 142, 144, *47, 235, 250, 292; 
his name and origin, 44, 72, 75; 
career, 72, 355; activities for Caesar, 
71 f., 139, 159, 407; prosecuted, 72, 
151 ; great wealth, 77, 381; does not 
enter the Senate, 80 f.; relations with 
Octavianus, 114, 131, 133; consulate, 
220; at the bedside of Atticus, 257; 
historical importance, 501 f. 

Cornelius Balbus, L., the Younger, 75, 
80, 235, 402; his daughter, 325, 498; 
proconsul of Africa, 328, 339; his 
triumph, 339, 367. 

Cornelius Cinna, L. (cos. 87 b.c.), 9, 25, 
65, 197; his daughters, 20, 25; 

descendants, 65, 269, 279, 423, 496. 

Cornelius Cinna, L. (pr. 44 b.c.), 65, 269. 

Cornelius Cinna, L. (? cos. suff. 32 b.c.), 
279,328. 

Cornelius Cinna Magnus, Cn. (cos. 

a. d. 5), 269, 299, 328, 349 f., 425, 
496; with Sex. Pompeius, 269; 
dubious conspiracy of, 414, 420. 

Cornelius Dolabella, misses the con¬ 
sulate under Augustus, 377. 

Cornelius Dolabella, P. (cos. suff. 44 

b. c.), 69, 94, 143, 163, 197; actions 
in 44 B.c., 97, 102, 107, 109; sets out 



INDEX 


for Syria, 124, 166; actions in the 
East, 171 f.; defeat and death, 203; 
his character, 69, 150 f. 

Cornelius Dolabella, P. (cos. a.d. 10), 
377 , 434 , 437 - 

Cornelius Gallus, C., from Forum Julii, 
origin of, 75, 79; as a poet, 252; his 
mistress, 252; his career, 253, 355; 
in the conquest of Egypt, 298 f.; Pre¬ 
fect of Egypt, 300; fall and disgrace, 
121, 309 f., 334. 

Cornelius Lentulus, proscribed, 198. 

Cornelius Lentulus, adherent of Sex. 
Pompeius, 228. 

Cornelius Lentulus, Cn. (cos. 18 b.c.), 
373, 400. 

Cornelius Lentulus, Cn., the Augur 
(cos. 14 B.c.), 381, 400 f. 

Cornelius Lentulus, Cossus (cos. 1 B.c.), 
proconsul of Africa, 401, 435; prae- 
fectus urbi and trusted by Tiberius, 
436 . 

Cornelius Lentulus, L. (cos. 3 b.c.), 
proconsul of Africa, 435. 

Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, Cn. 
(cos. 72 B.c.), 44, 66. 

Cornelius Lentulus Crus, L. (cos. 49 
b.c.), 41, 44 f- 

Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Cn. 
(cos. a.d. 26), 437; alleged conspiracy 
of, 494 , 497 - 

Cornelius Lentulus Maluginensis, 
grandfather of Seianus, 358, 377, 437. 

Cornelius Lentulus Maluginensis, Ser. 
(cos. stiff, a.d. 10), 377. 

Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, Cn. 
(cos. 56 B.c.), 35, 36, 44; his son a 
Caesarian, 64; his wife Scribonia, 
229. 

Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, P. 
(cos. 18 b.c.), 373. 

Cornelius Lentulus Scipio, P. (cos. 
suff. a.d. 24), legionary legate, 396. 

Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, P. (cos. 
57 b.c.), 35, 36, 44 f., 61. 

Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, P., the 
Younger, 45 ; with the Liberators, 171, 
198, 206. 

Cornelius Lentulus Sura, P. (cos. 71 
B.c.), Catilinarian, 44. 

Cornelius Nepos, his sagacious remarks 
on contemporary history, 250; on the 
quarrel of Octavianus and Antonius, 
258. 

Cornelius Scipio, paramour of Juba, 
426, 493. 


Cornelius Scipio, P. (cos. suff. 35 b.c.), 
230, 244; husband of Scribonia, 230. 

Cornelius Scipio, P. (cos. 16 B.c.), 373, 
423 - 

Cornelius Scipio, P. (cos. a.d. 50), 497. 

Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, P. (cos. 
147 b.c.), 12; his dictum about a 
Metellus, 20; enemies of, 60, 285; in 
Cicero’s De re publica, 319. 

Cornelius Scipio Asiagenus, L. (cos. 
83 b.c.), 43. 

Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, P. (cos. 
suff. a.d. 68), 497. 

Cornelius Severus, epic poet, 253. 

Cornelius Sisenna, his daughter marries 
the son of Taurus, 379. 

Cornelius Sisenna, two Augustan no- 
biles of this name, 377. 

Cornelius Sulla, Faustus, son of the 
Dictator, 39. 

Cornelius Sulla, L. (cos. 88 b.c.), 7, 9, 
16 f., 47, 51 f., 53, 65, 287, 306, 442, 
490; his party, i8ff.; marries a 
Metella, 20, 31; war against Marius, 
16 f., 65, 87 ff., 249, 491; punishes 
Etruria and the Italians, 87 f.; his 
Dictatorship, 17, 52; comparison 
with Caesar, 47, 51 f.; proscriptions, 
65, 190; Sullan senators, 78; Sullan 
creatures, 249; memory of, 65; 
descendants, 377, 423, 496 f. 

Cornelius Sulla, L. (cos. 5 B.C.), 420. 

Cornelius Sulla, P., Catilinarian, 66, 
77, 81, 380. 

Cornelius Sulla Felix, misses the con¬ 
sulate, 377. 

Cornelius Tacitus, the historian; his 
origin, 490; as a traditionalist his¬ 
torian, 5, 8, 420; his Annals , 1, 5, 
507 f., 517; Histories , 5, 507; on the 
Civil Wars, 9; on the results of civil 
war, 440, 507, 515; on Pompeius, 9; 
disapproval of political dynasts, 9, 
442, 51 $ ; on Libertas t 1 55 ; on Augus¬ 
tus, 3; on the Restoration of the 
Republic, 324 f.; on moral legislation, 
455; on virtue and vice, 105; on 
Republic and Monarchy, 512 ff.; on 
the decline of oratory, 515 f.; on 
Nerva and Trajan, 517; as a pessi¬ 
mistic monarchist, 516 ff.; compared 
with Lucan, 507 f.; with Juvenal, 489. 

Comificius, L. (cos. 35 b.c.), partisan of 
Octavianus, 132, 187, 200, 498; an 
admiral in the Bellum Siculum, 236 f.; 
his reward, 238, 244; proconsul of 



INDEX 


Africa, 239, 292; rebuilds temple of 
Diana, 402; his origin, 237. 

Cornificius, Q., Caesarian partisan, 63, 
76; in Africa, no, 189, 213; as a 
poet, 251. 

Corruption, electoral, 12, 13, 25, 33, 34, 
35, 38, 39, 62; political and general, 
63, 379 f* 

Cossinius, L., Pompeian partisan and 
authority on goats, 31. 

Court, the imperial, 385 f. 

Courtiers, 385 f., 501. 

Crassus, see Licinius. 

Crastinus, Caesarian centurion, 70. 

Cremona, 74, 79, 251. 

Cremutius Cordus, A., historian, 487, 
489. 

Crete, allotted to the Liberators, 119, 
126; liberated by Antomus, 272; a 
senatorial province, 328. 

Cupra Maritima, 31, 92, 473. 

Cura legum et morum, 443. 

Cura rei publicae, 313. 

Curatores, at Rome, 403. 

Curio, see Scribonius. 

Cursus honorum, under the Principate, 
35 8 f; 3 b 9 ff-, 396 . 

Curtius, C., benevolent banker, 73. 

Curtius Rufus, alleged son of a gladia¬ 
tor, 503. 

Cusinius, M. (pr. 44 b.c.), 91. 

Custos, as title of Augustus, 519 f. 

Cyprus, given to Egypt, 260, 272; under 
the Principate, 326, 339, 395, 406; 
governors of, 406. 

Cyrene, as a province of the Liberators, 
119, 126; under Antonius, 266, 298; 
under Augustus, 328, 357, 399; 

governors, 266, 298, 399; edicts from, 
336, 406, 408. 

Cytheris, famous actress, 252. 

Dacians, 74, 296, 400 f. 

Dalmatia, 437; see also Illyricum. 

Dalmatians, rising of, 431, 457, 476. 

Danube lands, see Illyricum, Moesia. 

Dardani, 223. 

Decidius, Cn., proscribed Samnite, 80. 

Decidius Saxa, L. ( tr. pi. 44 b.c.), 
Caesarian partisan from Spain, 79, 
80, u6, 126, 132, 151, 200, 350, 355; 
in the campaign of Philippi, 200, 202, 
204; governor of Syria, 214; killed 
by the Parthians, 223. 

Defamation, see Invective, Propaganda, 
Vice. 


545 

Deification, of Caesar, 53, 202, 471; of 
Augustus, 522, 524. 

Deiotarus, the Galatian, 108, 259. 

Dellius, Q., Antonian and renegade, 
214, 265, 267, 296, 385; writes his¬ 
tory, 265, 484; addressed by Horace 
in an Ode, 511; ‘desuitor bellorum 
civilium', 512. 

Demetrius, freedman of Antonius, 201. 

Demetrius of Gadara, freedman of 
Pompeius, 76, 385. 

Democracy, incapable of ruling em¬ 
pires, 346; Roman distrust of, 364; 
Tacitus’ dislike of, 515. 

Dictatorship, of Sulla, 17, 52; of 

Caesar, 51 ff., 77; abolition of, 107; 
of the Triumvirs, 3, 188; refused by 
Augustus, 339, 371. 

Didia Decuma, from Larinum, 361. 

Didius, Q., Antonian, 266, 267. 

Didius, T. (cos. 98 b.c.), novus homo , 93, 
94. 

Digmtas , 13, 25, 26, 35, 48, 70, 122, 
146, 151, 173, 209, 232, 357, 406, 417, 
430, 442, 504. 

Dio (Cassius), on the politics of 44 b.c., 
122; an imitator of Thucydides, 154; 
on the difficulty of imperial history, 
407 ; composes a debate on Monarchy 
and Republic, 413. 

Dionysus, 256, 263, 273 f. 

Diplomacy, use of, 71 f., 156 f., 158 f., 
166, 169, 178 ff., 188, 217, 221, 225, 
etc. 

Divine honours, 53 f., 256; for Pom¬ 
peius, 30, 263; Caesar, 53 ff., 263; 
Antonius, 263, 273; Octavianus, 233; 
Augustus, 305, 469 ff., 519, 524; for 
Gaius and Lucius, 472, 474. 

Divus Julius , 55, 202, 211, 250, 301, 
305, 318; cult of, in the Principate, 
47 i- 

Dolabella, see Cornelius. 

Domi nobiles , 82, 89; see also Municipia. 

Dominatio , 155, 418, 516. 

Domitia, daughter of Ahenobarbus (cos. 

16 B.c.) and wife of Passienus Crispus, 
3 * 4 . 501. 

Domitia Lepida, daughter of Aheno¬ 
barbus (cos. 16 b.c.), 230. 

Domitian, the Emperor, called ‘dux’ 
by Statius, 312. 

Domitii, 19, 382, 492, 494, 495; their 
interest in Gallia Transalpina, 44, 
75 . 79 f»; feud with Plancus, 281. 

Domitiopolis, in Cilicia, 281. 



546 INDEX 


Dornitius Afer, Cn. (cos. stiff, a.d. 39), 
orator from Vienna, 44, 79, 367, 456, 
502. 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (cos. 122 
B.C.), 44. 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (cos. 96 
B.c.), 24, 44. 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (Marian 
partisan), 20, 27. 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (cos. 32 
b.c.), 51, 198, 202, 206, 210, 212, 213, 
216, 225, 227, 230, 241, 264, 405; as 
a Republican party leader, 268, 281, 
495; in 32 b.c. , 276, 278, 281; dis¬ 
likes Cleopatra, 281; loyalty of, 281, 
282; desertion and death of, 296; 
descendants, 421 f., 494 f., sro. 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (cos. a.l>. 

32), 510- 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, L. (cos. 54 
B.c.), 24, 50, 61, 90, no, 495; active 
in 56 b.c. , 37; his consulate, 37, 38, 
374; misses an augurship, 41, 382; 
his feuds, 62, 63 ; wealth, popularity 
and influence, 13, 14, 24; connexions, 
24, 44 f- 

Dornitius Ahenobarbus, L. (cos. 16 
B.c.), 373, 378, 379, 392, 393, 423, 
425; proconsul of Africa, 395; in 
Illyricum, 400; in Germany, 401, 
431; character of, 421 f., 510. 

Dornitius Apulus, Antonian, 132. 

Dornitius Calvinus, Cn. (cos. 53 B.c.), 
Caesarian partisan, 62, 111, 165, 197, 
327, 368; in the campaign of Philippi, 
205; his second consulate, 189, 227; 
governor of Spain, 227, 332; repairs 
the Regia, 241; religious activities, 
412; his granddaughter, 325; his 
enigmatic career, 234 f. 

Dornitius Decidius, Narbonensian sena¬ 
tor, 44. 

Donations, of Antonius, 260, 270, 300 f. 

Donatives to soldiers, 125, 126, 177, 
187, 204, 284, 352. 

Drusus, stepson of Augustus (Nero 
Claudius Drusus), 340 f., 378, 395; 
Alpine campaigns, 390; in Germany, 
391 ; death of, 391 ; his three children, 
422. 

Drusus, son of Tiberius, 431. 

Drusus, son of Germanicus, 438. 

Duces , honoured by Augustus, 449, 
470 f.; comparison with, 522. 

Dux, 288; as used of Augustus, 311 f., 
519 . 


Dynasts, political, their habits and 
activities, 8 f., 15, 26, 38, 250, 315, 
324, 370, 441 f., 490 f., 515, 522 f.; 
local, 82 f., 89, 91 f., 289, 292, 360 IT., 
etc. 

East, the, clientela of Pompeius in, 30, 
74, 76, 261; of Caesar, 262; of An¬ 
tonius, 262 f., 300 f.; of Augustus, 
300 f., 365 f., 473 f., 476; arrange¬ 
ments of Antonius, 259 ff., 266, 271 
ff.; opposition to the West, 290, 301, 
347; Octavianus’ arrangements, 300 
f.; need for a separate ruler, 347; in 
relation to the Princeps, 473 f.; to the 
Empire, 365 ; Agrippa’s activity, 389; 
Gaiu9 Caesar’s, 428. 

Economy, of Italy, impaired by the 
separation of East and West, 290; 
revived by the Principate, 351, 451 f. 

Education, Roman view of, 445. 

Egnatius Rufus, demagogue and con¬ 
spirator, 371, 402. 

Egnatuleius, L., quaestor of Antonius, 
126, 132. 

Egypt, in relation to Pompeius and 
Caesar, 37, 76; troops in, hi, 124; 
augmented by Antonius, 260 f., 272 
f.; annexed, 300; wealth of, 290, 304, 
380; under Augustus, 314, 357; 

garrison, 356; property held there, 
380; worship of Augustus, 474; Pre¬ 
fects of Egypt, 300, 338, 357, 358, 
3 ^ 7 , 3 & 3 > 411. 437 - 

Emigration, from Italy, 80, 366 f., 450. 

Ennius, on ‘mores antiqui’, 442; on 
Romulus, 520. 

Ennoblement, qualifications for, 374 ff. 

Epicureanism, in politics, 135 f.; anti¬ 
political, 247; out of favour under the 
Principate, 461. 

Epicureans, 135 f., 149 f. 

Eprius Marcellus, on the Republic, 514. 

Equality, political, 352. 

Equites } see Financiers, Knights, Publi- 
cani. 

Estates, large, 12, 14, 28, 31, 82, 89, 195, 
380 f., 450 ff. 

Etruria, Marian sympathies of, 17, 87 
ff.; punished by Sulla, 87; rises for 
Lepidus, 17, 89; Marian and Caesa¬ 
rian partisans, 90, 93; Sertorius, 129; 
Triumviral and Augustan navi ho¬ 
mines y 199 f., 363; ancient families of 
Etruria, 82 f.; propertied classes, 89; 
Roman noble houses of Etruscan 



INDEX 


origin, 85 f.; Etruscan nomenclature, 
93, 129 f., 362. 

Etruscans, see Etruria. 

Eunoe, mistress of Caesar, 275. 

Fabia Numantina, 377, 421, 496. 

Fabia Paullina, wife of M. Titius, 379. 

Fabii, 10, 18, 68, 84, 85, 163, 244, 373, 
37 b> 379 , 423 , 496 , 51 1 - 

Fabius Maximus, Africanus (cos. 10 
b.c.), 373 , 377 - 

Fabius Maximus, Paullus (cos. 1 1 B.C.), 
375 , 37 b, 377 , 379 , 420, 421, 425. 
487; his oratory, 375; as a patron of 
literature, 460; proconsul of Asia, 
375 , 395, 405, 474 ; in Spain, 401; 
propagator of the imperial cult, 474; 
his character as defined by Cassius 
Severus, 487; by Horace, 511. 

Fabius Maximus, Q. (cos. suff. 45 b.c.), 
68 f., 95- 

Fabius Persicus, Paullus (cos. a.d. 34), 
496; nobility and vices of, 374, 511. 

Fabius Quintilianus, M., on ‘Patavini- 
tas’, 485 ; on satire, 489. 

Fabricius, Q. (cos. suff. 2 B.c.), 362. 

Factio , 12, 22, 157. 

Factions, in Roman politics, 7 f., 11 ff., 
16, 20, &e.; see also Feuds. 

Facsulac, prolific person from, 469. 

Fannius, C., adherent of Sex. Pompeius, 
228. 

Fannius Cacpio, Republican and con¬ 
spirator, 333 f. 

Faunus, alleged ancestor of the Vitellii, 

S 3 - 

Favonius, M., friend of Cato, 2, 116, 
180, 198, 206. 

Fcrentinum, 95, 362. 

Ferentum, in Etruria, 361. 

Ferocia , 299, 320, 482, 512. 

Feuds, family and personal, 13, 27, 44, 
63,69, 135 , Ho, 147 , 157^,281,513. 

Fidcs, 57, 70, 424, 456. 

Fidustius, M., proscribed, 195. 

Financiers, activities of, 14 f., 355, 477; 
relations with senators, 14; detested 
by Cato, 26; hostile to Lucullus, 21; 
hostile to Gabinius, 67, 149 f.; sup¬ 
ported by Crassus, 34; relations with 
Caesar, 73, 81 f.; afraid of the Pom¬ 
peians, 73; support Octavianus in 44 
b.c., 131; attitude to Antonius, 272 f., 
290; welcome the Principate, 351; 
under the Principate, 355; see also 
Knights. 


547 

Firmius, L., military tribune, 354. 

Firmum, 169. 

Flavii, 83, 354, 361. 

Flavius, C., banker and friend of 
Brutus, 102, 198. 

Flavius, L. (tr. pi. 60 b.c.), 33 f., 66. 

Flavius, L. (cos. suff. 33 b.c.), Antonian 
partisan, 242, 266, 498. 

Flavius Fimbria, C. (cos. 104 B.c.), 
no7Jus homo , 94. 

Flavius Gallus, Antonian general, 264. 

Flavius Petro, T., Pompeian veteran, 
354 - 

Flavius Sabinus, T., tax-gatherer, 354, 
361. 

Flavius Vespasianus, T., see Vespasian, 
the Emperor. 

Fleets, of Sex. Pompeius, 228; of Octa¬ 
vianus, 231, 295; of Antonius, 231, 
294 f.; command of, under the Princi¬ 
pate, 356, 397; sec also Admirals. 

Fleginas, C., knight from Placentia, 74. 

Fonteius Capito, C. (cos. suff. 33 b.c.), 
Antonian diplomat, 225, 242, 259, 
266, 267. 

Foreigners, in command of Roman 
armies, 201; hatred of, 256, 287, 290; 
scorn of, 441. 

Formiae, 27, 71, 194. 

Forum Gallorum, Battle of, 174. 

Forum Julii, 75, 252, 292, 367. 

Fraternization, in civil wars, 138 ff., 
178 f„ 217. 

Freedmen, sons of, in the Senate, 78, 
354; wealth, 76, 195, 354; of Caesar, 
76, 130; of Pompeius, 76, 385; with 
Sex. Pompeius, 228; holding military 
commands, 201; unpopular in 32 b.c., 
284; status and opportunities in the 
Principate, 354; imperial freedmen, 
385, 410; legislation concerning, 446; 
enrolled for military service, 458. 

Freedom, see Libertas. 

Freedom of speech, in the Republic, 
149 ff.; an essential part of Libertas , 
152 ; under the Triumvirs, 246; under 
Augustus, 482 ff.; decline of, 487 ff., 
507 . 

Fruticius, M., senator from Verona, 
, 363 - 

Fuficius Fango, C., ex-centurion from 
Acerrae, 79, 91, 200; in Africa, 213, 
. 2 35 ; 

Fufidius, L., Sullan primipilaris } 78, 
249. 

Fufius, son of Q. Fufius Calenus, 213. 



54 8 INDEX 


Fufius Calenus, Q. (cos. 47 B.c.), Caesa¬ 
rian partisan, 66, 94, 111, 126, 197; 
defends the cause of Antonius, 165, 
167, 168, 172; rescues Varro, 193; in 
42-40 B.c., 202, 210; his death, 213 ; 
related to Pansa, 134. 

Fulvia, wife of M. Antonius, 63 ; alleged 
role in the proscriptions, 191; in the 
Perusine War, 208, 209, 210, 211, 
212; her flight and death, 215, 217; 
her children, 189, 299; a rehabilita¬ 
tion, 208. 

Fulvii, 19, 85. 

Fundi, 358. 

Furii, 18 , 377 , 497- 

Furius Bibaculus, M., poet, 251, 253. 

Furius Camillus, M. (cos. a.d. 8), 377, 
434; his daughter, 377, 422; his son, 
377, 497- 

Fumius, C., Antonian partisan, 210, 
267; governor of Asia, 232, 264; as 
a speaker, 283; spared after Actium, 
299; adlected inter consulares, 349 f. 

Furnius, C. (cos. 17 b.c.), saves his father, 
299; legate in Spain, 333; consul, 373. 

Gabinius, A. (cos. 58 b.c.), as tribune, 
29; legate of Pompeius, 31, 32; con¬ 
sul, 36, 82, 94, 374; governor of 
Syria, 66 f., 103, 149 f.; trial and 
condemnation, 48, 66, 144; a Caesa¬ 
rian, 62, 81; his death, 62; no con¬ 
sular son, 498; alleged vices, 149; 
his character defended, 66 f.; origin, 
31, 92 - 

Gadara, 150, 385. 

Gadcs, 72, 75, 80, 292; exports of, 455. 

Gaetuli, clients of Marius, 76. 

Gaius, the Emperor, see Caligula. 

Gaius Caesar (grandson of Augustus), 
392, 412, 420, 427; honours for, 417, 
472, 474; betrothed to Julia Livia, 
422; in the East, 428 f.; death, 430. 

Galatia, in the Triumviral period, 259, 
260; under Augustus, 391, 394 ; an¬ 
nexed, 338, 476; governors, 338, 
398 f.; legionary recruits, 295, 457; 
worship of Augustus, 474. 

Galba, the Emperor, 1, 105; as a cour¬ 
tier, 385 f.; enjoys the favour of 
women, 386, 511 ; legate of Tarraco- 
nensis, 503 ; his essential nullity, 105, 
503 . 

Gallia Cisalpina, as Caesar’s province, 
36; allegiance to the Pompeii and to 
Caesar, 74; strategic importance of, 


36, 124; in 44 B.c., 103, no, 124, 
126; a proposal about the province, 
118; as a province of Antonius, 189; 
abolition of the province, 206 f., 209, 
314; governors, 35, 36, 62, 64, no, 
209; activities of Pollio there, 207, 
252, 404; poets from Cisalpina, 74, 
251; senators, 79, 363; contribution 
to the army, 70, 456; patriotism, 465 ; 
Republicanism, 465. 

Gallia Comata, loyal to Caesar, 74 f.; 
in 44 b.c., no, 165; under the 
Triumvirate, 189, 207, 210, 213, 292; 
in the provincia of Augustus, 313; 
governors, no, 165, 187, 202, 210, 
239, 292, 302 f., 329, 339, 378; taxa¬ 
tion of, 410, 476 f.; loyalty to Augus¬ 
tus, 474 f.; chieftains admitted to the 
Senate, 501. 

Gallia Narbonensis, as Caesar’s pro¬ 
vince, 36, 74 f.; in 44 b.c., no, 165; 
under the Triumvirate, 189, 207, 
292; in the provincia of Augustus, 
326; surrendered to the Senate, 339, 
395; governors, no, 165, 202; the 
client da of the Domitii, 44, 74 f., 79 
f.; of Pompeius, 74 f.; Caesarian 
partisans, 74 f.; senators from, 79 f., 
367, 502 f.; knights, 356; soldiers, 
457 5 poets, 252 f.; emperors, 360, 
490, 501 f.; importance under the 
Empire, 366, 455. 

Gallia Transalpina, sec Gallia Narbo¬ 
nensis. 

Gallius, Q. (pr. 43 b.c.), 187. 

Games, demonstrations at, 116 f., 459, 
478; under the Principate, 468 f. 

Gardens, pleasure-, 21, 77, 380, 452. 

Gaul, sec Gallia. 

Gellius Poplicola, L. (aw. 72 b.c.), 
censor and legate of Pompeius, 66. 

Gellius Poplicola, L. (cos. 36 b.c.), 
Antonian partisan and admiral, 198, 
269, 296, 350. 

Genealogy, frauds in, 83, 85, 377. 

Generals, in politics, 15, 158 f., 180; 
of the Triumvirs, 199 ff.; of Octa- 
vianus, 234 ff., 327 f.; of Antonius, 
266 ff.; of Augustus, 329 f., 397 ff.; 
military experience of, 395. 

Gentilicia , as historical evidence, 84 f., 
89, 91, 93 f., 129, 200 f., 237, 360 f., 
405 ; see also Nomenclature. 

Germanicus Caesar, son of Drusus, 422, 
437> 5°5; betrothals of his children, 

437 f. 



INDEX 


Germany, invasions of, 391,474; legates 
in, 401, 435, 437- 

Getae, transplanted by Aelius Catus, 
400 f. 

Gibbon, E., salubrious estimate of 
Augustus, 3; on the advantages of 
hereditary monarchy, 513. 

Glaphyra, Cappadocian courtesan, 214. 

Gloria, 26, 70, 145, 146, 442. 

Gods, descent from, 68, 83, 100, 360. 

Gracchi, activity of, 16; party of, 60; 
and agriculture, 450 f.; see also 
Sempronius. 

Granii, commercial family from Puteoli, 
90 f. 

G rani us Petro, Caesarian, 90 f. 

Greece, in relation to Roman patriotism, 
440, 449; and Roman literature, 461. 

Greeks, conciliated by Antonius, 262 f.; 
derided by Juvenal, 490; in the 
Roman equestrian service, 506; in the 
Senate, 365 ff. 

Hadrian, the Emperor, 415, 502. 

Haterius, Q. (cos. stiff. 5 b.c.), 362, 
375 - 

Helenus, freedman of Octavianus, 201, 
221. 

Ilelvidius Priscus, son of a centurion, 
his Republicanism, 514. 

Hclvii, Gallic tribe, 75. 

Hclvius, of Formiac, 27. 

Helvius Cinna, C., Caesarian and poet, 
79, 251. 

Heracles, 263. 

Hcrennius, M. (cos. 93 B.c.), novus homo , 
94 - 

Herennius, M. (cos. suff. 34 b.c.), 92, 
200, 242, 328, 498. 

Herennius, T., Italian general, 92. 

Herennius Picens, M. (cos. suff. a.d. i), 
92. 

Herod the Idumaean, 201, 260, 474; 
death of, 412, 476. 

Herophilus, impostor, 99, 105, 116. 

Hirtius, A., from Ferentinum, 362. 

Hirtius, A. (cos. 43 b.c.), novus homo and 
Caesarian, 95; in 44 b.c., 97, 99 f., 
102, 114, 115, 142, 163; his policy, 
133 , 176; in the War of Mutina, 167, 
1 69, 173 f.; his death, 174; his charac¬ 
ter and activities, 71; writings, 71, 
148, 460; origin, 95. 

Hispalis, 70, 75, 80. 

Hispania Citerior, governors of, 36, no, 
i6 5 > 332 f., 4 OI > 433 E, 438, 503; 


549 

extent of, under Augustus, 395, 401; 
see also Spain. 

Hispania Ulterior, governors of, 34, 64, 
72, no, 166, 213, 332 f., 401; status 
under Augustus, 395, 401 ; see also 
Spain. 

Histonium, 360, 361. 

History, Roman, its characteristics and 
categories, 5, 8, 249 f., 485; popu¬ 
larity of, in the Triumviral period, 
250 f.; suitably to be written by 
senators, 5, 251,420, 485 ; Republican 
tone of, 5, 420; preoccupation with 
‘clari viri\ 508; archaism, 485; con¬ 
servatism, 508 ; decline of, under the 
Empire, 487. 

Homonadenses, 393, 399, 476. 

Horatius Flaccus, Q., 198; Epodes, 16, 
218; at Tarentum, 225 ; early life and 
writings, 254; style and character, 
255, 4b 1 ; on Marsians and Apulians, 
287; on Cleopatra, 299; on Caesar, 
318; on Varro Murena, 334; his 
Odes anticipate reforms, 339; on 
Augustus, 443, 392, 519; on the 
Claudii, 390, 443; the Carmen saecu- 
lare, 444; on pietas , 448 ; on peasant 
soldiers, 449, 451; on freedmen, 354; 
the interpretation of his moral and 
patriotic poetry, 451 f., 461 f.; his 
Ode to Pollio, 6, 8; Agrippa, 344; 
Ixdlius, 392; Fabius Maximus, 511; 
Dellius, 511; Plancus, 511; the Ars 
poetica, 460, 461 ; his patrons, 460. 

Hortensia, wife of Q. Scrvilius Caepio, 
23 f., 196. 

Hortensii, 492. 

Hortcnsius, Q. (cos. 69 n.c.), his charac¬ 
ter and wealth, 21; political activity, 
22, 23, 28, 33, 39; his death, 44, 61 ; 
character of his oratory, 245; his 
town house, 380. 

Hortensius Hortalus, M., impoverished 
grandson of the orator, 493. 

Hortensius Hortalus, Q., as a Caesa¬ 
rian, 63, 64; governor of Macedonia, 
no f.; with the Liberators, 171, 198; 
death at Philippi, 205. 

Hostilius Sascrna, C., Caesarian, 79. 

Ilostilius Sascrna, L., Caesarian, 79. 

Hostilius Sascrna, P., Caesarian, 79. 

Hybreas, orator of Mylasa, 259. 

Idealization, of early Rome, 249, 452 f., 
455; of municipal men, 455; of pea¬ 
sants, 454, 456; of Pompeius, 317 f. 



INDEX 


Illyricum, in the provincia of Caesar, 
47; campaigns of Octavianus, 240; 
a senatorial province, 314, 315, 329 
f., 394; taken by the Princeps, 329, 
394, 406; conquest in, 370 f.; rebel¬ 
lion of, 431 f., 457 f.; governors, 62, 
1 ro, 171, 329, 330, 390, 394, 400, 436, 
437 * 

Imperator, adopted as a praenomcn by 
Octavianus, 113; title assumed by 
proconsuls, 238, 308, 312 ; denied to 
a proconsul, 308; forbidden to pro- 
consuls, 404. 

Imperialism, Roman, 441, 456. 

Imperium consulcire , 162, 315, 326, 330. 

Imperium proconsulate , 29, 38, 313 f., 
336 f., 416, 428, 431, 523; of Augus¬ 
tus, 313 f., 336 f., 406, 412. 

Inimici, 13, 61, 288, &c.; see also Feuds. 

Insteius, M., Antonian partisan from 
Pisaurum, 132, 267, 296, 350. 

Interamnia Praetuttianorum, 362. 

Invective, political, 127, 149 ft., 211, 
250, 276 f., 282 f., 486 f. 

Iotape, Median princess, 265 f. 

Isaurians, 393, 399. 

Isidorus, scandalously wealthy freed- 
man, 354. 

I tala virtus , 441, 449 f., 457. 

Italia , as a political notion, 87, 286. 

Italici, 86 ff., 94; disliked by Cato, 26; 
their hatred of Rome, 86 f., 286 f., 
359; aristocracy of, 87, 91 f., 285, 
359 ff- 

Italy, in relation to Rome, 8, 16 f., 49, 
82 ff., 86 ff., 208, 244, 285 ff., 359, 
449 f., 453, 465 f.; unification of, 86 
ff., 286 ff., 359, 365, 450; local families 
in, 10, 31, 82 ff., 356, 359; sec also 
Bellum Italicum, Municipia, Tota 
Italia. 

luratio Italiae , 284 ff. 

Janus, closing of, 303. 

Juba, King of Mauretania, 300, 365 f. 

Judaea, in the Triumviral period, 223 f., 
260; Cleopatra’s designs on, 260 f., 
274; annexed by Augustus, 357, 394, 
412,476. 

Judas, the Galilaean insurgent, 476. 

Julia, wife of C. Marius, 25. 

Julia, sister of Caesar, 112. 

Julia, wife of P. Sulpicius Rufus, 65. 

Julia, mother of M. Antonius, 64, 215. 

Julia, daughter of Caesar, 34, 36, 38, 58, 


Julia, daughter of Augustus, 358, 378; 
married to Marcellus, 341; to Ag- 
rippa, 389; to Tiberius, 416; ruin 
of, 425 ff.; alleged enormities, 426; 
in exile, 494. 

Julia, granddaughter of Augustus, dis¬ 
grace and exile of, 432, 468, 494. 

Julia Livia, daughter of Drusus, 422. 

Julia Livilla, daughter of Germanicus, 
499. 

Julian the Apostate, on Augustus, 2. 

Julii, 25, 64, 68, 70, 84, 493, 494, 495. 

Julium sidus, 117, 218, 296, 297, 318. 

Julius Aquila, C., praefectus Aegypti , 

367.411* 

Julius Agricola, Cn., from Forum Julii, 
292, 356, 455, 502. 

Julius Caesar, C. (ros. 59 B.c.), his 
family and connexions, 25, 64, 68; 
early career, 25, 29, 32; consulate and 
alliance with Pompeius, 8, 33 f.; his 
consular province, 36; at Ravenna 
and Luca, 37; relations with Pom¬ 
peius, 40 ff.; responsibility for the 
Civil War, 47 ff.; Dictatorship, 51 ff.; 
not really a revolutionary, 52, 59, 68, 
194; monarchic position, 54, 59, 

490 f.; ultimate designs, 53 ff.; assas¬ 
sination, 97; funeral, 98 f.; cult, 99, 
117, 123, 204; reputation under the 
Principate, 317 f., 442. 

His partisans and adherents, 41, 51, 
59, 61 ff., 94 f.; relations with the 
Marian party, 65, 89, 94; partisans 
among the Italici, 91 ft.; in the muni¬ 
cipia , 89 ff.; in the West, 74 ff.; in 
the East, 262; his legates, 67, 94; 
secretariat, 71 f., 407; relations with 
financiers, 52 f., 72 f.; confiscations, 
76; increase of Senate, 77 ff.; choice 
of consuls, 94 f.; the unification of 
Italy, 82, 89 ff., 92 ff., 359; his liberal 
policy, 365 f. 

His character, 25, 70, 121 f.; in¬ 
sistence on dignitas y 48, 70, 122; 
arrogance, 42, 56; melancholy, 56; 
ambition, 25, 42, 56, 145; clemency, 
51, 65, 159; on duties towards clients, 
70; on the res publica , 53; pride of 
birth, 68; literary interests, 459 f.; 
Caesar and Cicero, 137 ff.; see also 
Divus Julius. 

Julius Caesar, C. (cos. a.d. i), see Gaius 
Caesar. 

Julius Caesar (Octavianus), C. (cos. suff. 
43 b.c.), see Augustus. 



INDEX 


Julius Caesar, L. (cos. 64 b.c.), 64; 
attitude in 43 b.c., 164, 170, 172; 
proscribed, 192; disappears from 
notice, 197. 

Julius Caesar, Sex. ( q. 47 b.c.), Caesa¬ 
rian, 64. 

Julius Calidus, L., poetical knight, pro¬ 
scribed, 192 f., 195. 

Julius Eurycles, C., Spartan dynast, 476. 

Julius JLaco, C\, Greek in imperial 
service, 506. 

Julius Papius, C., officer in Egypt, 295. 

Julius Scverus, C., Hadnanic senator 
from the East, 366. 

Julius Spartiaticus, C., Greek in im¬ 
perial service, 506. 

Julius Vercondaridubnus, C., high 
priest at Lugdunum, 475. 

Julius Viator, Ti., freedman’s son in 
militia equestris , 354. 

Junia, wife of Cassius, 69, 116; her 
funeral, 492. 

Junia, mother of C. Claudius Marcellus 
(cos. 50 b.c.), 134. 

Junia Calvina, descendant of Augustus, 
495 . 501 - 

Junii, 19, 85, 163, 244, 492, 495. 

Junii Silani, 382, 495. 

Junius Blaesus, Q. (cos. suff. a.d. 10), 
twvus homo , 363, 404, 434, 437. 

Junius Brutus, L. (cos. 509 b.c.), of 
dubious authenticity, 59, 85. 

Junius Brutus, M. (tr. pi. 83 b.c.), father 
of the tyrannicide, 19, 27, 148. 

Junius Brutus, M. (pr. 44 b.c.), his 
family, 27, 44 f., 58; betrothed to 
Julia, 34; marries Claudia, 45 ; marries 
Porcia, 58; his hatred of Pompcius, 
27, 58; relations with Caesar, 58; 
motives for the assassination, 57 ff.; 
his actions on and after the Ides of 
March, 97 ff.; political prospects, 99 
ff.; his friendship with Antonius, 98, 
106, 203, 206; actions in summer, 
44 b.c., 116 ff.; departure from Italy, 
119, 140; seizure of Macedonia, 171 f., 
184; quarrels with Cicero, 183 f.; his 
distaste for civil war, 183 f., 203; 
campaign of Philippi, 203 ff.; his 
suicide, 206. 

His allies and relatives, 44 f., 69, 95, 
163, 198, 205 f., 492 f.; his character, 
57 147 f*> 183 f., 320; philosophical 

studies, 57; qualities as an orator, 58, 
97 * 246; his opinion of Cicero, 138, 
143, 203; his views on imperialism, 


551 

320; posthumous reputation, 148, 
320, 465, 506. 

Junius Brutus Albinus, D., Caesarian 
and tyrannicide, 64, 95, 109; after the 
Ides of March, 97, 101, 102 f.; in 
Gallia Cisalpina, no, 124, 127, 144; 
in the War of Mutina, 162 ff., 176 ff.; 
his end, 180; his family and con¬ 
nexions, 64, 134. 

Junius Brutus Damasippus, L., partisan 
of Marius, 19. 

Junius Gallio, rhetorician and senator, 
3 6 7 - 

Junius Montanus, T., equestrian officer 
with long service, 356. 

Junius Silanus, D. (cos. 62 b.c.), 69. 

Junius Silanus, D., paramour of the 
younger Julia, 432. 

Junius Silanus, L., consular candidate 
in 22 b.c., 371. 

Junius Silanus, M. (cos. a.d. 19), hus¬ 
band of Aemilia Lepida, 432, 495. 

Junius Silanus, M. (cos. 25 B.c.), no¬ 
torious renegade, 325, 349; legate of 
Lepidus, 178; with Sex. Pompeius, 
189, 227; an Antonian, 268; deserts 
Antonius, 296; made a patrician, 382; 
illustrious and ill-fated descendants, 
495 - 

Junius Silanus, M. (cos. a.d. 46), ‘the 
golden sheep’, descendant of Augustus, 
1* 439 , 495 - 

Junsts, 374, 375, 411 f., 482 f. 

Jus ltalicum, 367. 

Juventius Laterensis, M., honest Re¬ 
publican, 179. 

Kings, of Rome, 68, 58 f., 84 f., 365. 

Knights, status and pursuits of, 13 f.; 
ideals, 14, 504; averse from politics, 
13, 94, 359, 363 ; control of law courts, 
13; entry to Senate, 10, 13,81,358 ff.; 
military service, 70 f., 78 f., 82, 353 
ff., 395 f.; in the faction of Octavianus, 
133; commanding armies, 201, 355; 
victims of the proscriptions, 195; in 
32 B.c., 290; at Gades and Corduba, 
292 ; sentiments about the new order, 
257, 351; as a cardinal factor in the 
Principate, 355; as procurators, 356; 
in high office, 356 f., 409; personal 
friends and counsellors of the Prin- 
ceps, 358, 409 ff. 

Labienus, Q., ‘Parthicus imperator’, 
223, 259. 



INDEX 


Labienus, T., legate of Caesar, 31, 90, 
94, 163, 178, 396, 397; origin and 
allegiance, 31, 88; his tribunate, 32; 
attacked by Catullus, 63 ; allegiance in 
50 b.c., 42, 63 ; prospects of consulate, 
67; deserts Caesar, 67 f. 

Labienus, T., orator and historian, 486, 
489. 

Laelius, C., novus homo and friend of 
the Scipiones, 85. 

Lamus, fictitious ancestor of the Aelii 
Lamiae, 83. 

Land, ownership of, 12, 31, 194 f., 451 
f.; price of, 451; see also Agriculture, 
Estates. 

Lanuvium, 94, 303, 360, 362. 

Lares compitales , 446. 

Larinum, 82, 193, 360, 361, 362, 383. 

Laronius, Q. (cos. stiff. 33 B.c.), novus 
homo and admiral of Octavianus, 200, 
237 f., 242, 328; origin, 237; no 
descendants, 498. 

Latium, plebeian families from, 85; sup¬ 
port for Liberators in, 101 ; Augustan 
senators from, 360. 

Lotus ctavus , 358, 359, 363. 

Laudatio Turiae , referred to, 190, 192; 
quoted, 513 f. 

Legality, 49, *53 ff-, 162 f., 277 ff., 
315 f., 324; ‘higher legality’, 160 f., 
168, 172, 285. 

Legates, of Pompeius, 31, 67, 396; of 
Caesar in Gaul, 67, 94 f., 199; of 
Octavianus, consular and praetorian, 
327, 329 f., 393 ; in 27-23 b.c., 329 f.; 
choice of, 395; military experience, 
396 f.; long tenures, 397. 

Legions, command of, 201, 356, 396; 
recruitment, 15, 295, 456 ff.; total 
after Actium, 304; in 13 B.c., 389 f. 

Legislation, moral, 53, 443 ff.; efficacy 
of, 442, 45 s f. 

Leges Jfuliae, 426, 443 ff. 

Lenaeus, freedman of Pompeius, 250. 

Lentulus, see Cornelius. 

Lepidus, see Aemilius. 

Lex de permutatione provinciarum , 115, 
162. 

Lex Gabinia , 29. 

Lex Manilia , 29. 

Lex Papia Poppaea , 444, 452. 

Lex Pedia , 187, 384. 

Lex Rufrena, 202. 

Lex Saenia, 306. 

Lex Titia , 190, 225. 

Liberators, party of, 59 f., 95, 198 f.-, 


205 f.; on and after the Ides of March, 
97 ff.; in the summer, 44 b.c., i 16 ff. ; 
leave Italy, 119, 124, 163, 167; win 
eastern armies, 171, 184; in campaign 
of Philippi, 203 ff.; end of, 205 f.; 
on the side of Antonius, 268 f.; 
descendants of, 492; their memory 
honoured at Mediolanium, 465, 478. 

Libertas, 5, 57, 59, 70, 109, 119, 152, 
320 f., 420, 440, 456, 482, 492, 506, 
512, 515; as a catchword, 154 ff.; 
under the Principate, 320 f., 516 f. 

Libertas Augusta, 506. 

Liberty, nature of, at Rome, 2, 59, 154 
ff.; incompatible with peace and 
order, 9, 59, 512 ff.; guaranteed by 
monarchy, 516, 518. 

Libo, see Scribonius. 

Licinia, mother of Q. Metellus Scipio, 
37 - 

Licinia, daughter of a P. Crassus, 310. 

Licinii, 19, 85, 163, 244, 423 f., 496 f. 

Licinii Crassi, 22, 424, 496 f. 

Licinii Luculli, 21, 492. 

Licinius Calvus, C., poet and orator, 
63, 245, 246, 251. 

Licinius Crassus, L. (cos. 95 B.c.), great 
orator, 36. 

Licinius Crassus, M. (cos. 70 B.c.), 8; 
his career, 22, 26, 29, 33 f., 35 f., 37; 
death, 38; his character, 22; wealth, 
12; a dictum about politics, 12; con¬ 
nexion with the Metelli, 22, 36; with 
the Scipiones, 36; relations with 
Catilina, 26, 60; with financiers, 34, 
72; Spanish clientela , 75; descen¬ 
dants, 424, 496 f. 

Licinius Crassus, M., elder son of M. 
Crassus (cos. 70 B.c.), and a Caesarian, 
22, 36, 64. 

Licinius Crassus, M. (cos. 30 B.c.), with 
Sex. Pompeius, 269; with Antonius, 
266, 269; deserts Antonius, 296; 
proconsul of Macedonia, 303, 308, 
327, 349; claim to spolia opima and 
clash with Octavianus, 308 f.; de¬ 
scendants, 424, 496 f. 

Licinius Crassus, M. (cos. 14 B.c.), 424, 

Licinius Crassus, P. (cos. 97 B.c.), 22. 

Licinius Crassus, P., younger son of 
M. Crassus (cos. 70 b.c.), married to 
Cornelia, 22, 36, 40. 

Licinius Crassus Frugi, M. (cos. a.d. 27), 
424 . 497 . 

Licinius Crassus Mucianus, P. (cos. 
131 b.c.), 60. 



index 553 


Licinius Lucullus, L. (cos. 74 b.c.), his 
eastern command, 21, 29, 48, 385; in 
retirement, 23 ; against Pompeius, 33; 
insolently treated by Caesar, 56; de¬ 
rided by Pompeius, 74; his wives, 
20, 21; relatives, 21 f., 44. 

Licinius Lucullus, M. (cos. 73 B.c.), see 
Terentius Varro Lucullus, M. 

Licinius Lucullus, M., kinsman of 
Brutus, 198, 205. 

Licinius Murena, L. (cos. 62 b.c.), novus 
homoy 94. 

Licinius Nerva Silianus, A. (cos. suff. 
A.D. 7), 434 , 435 - 

Licinius Stolo, C., Augustan nobilis, 382. 

Licinius Sura, L., and the adoption of 
Trajan, 415. 

Licinus, freedman and procurator of 
Gaul, 410, 476. 

Ligarius, Q., Pompeian and assassin, 
95, 206. 

Ligustinus, Sp., as type of prolific 
peasant soldier, 449. 

Literature, under the Triumvirs, 247 ff.; 
under the Principate, 459 ff. ; political 
literature, 149 fh, 486; opposition 
literature, 486 f.; creation of a classical 
literature at Rome, 461 ; repression of, 
486; decline of, 487, 515 f.; servility 
of government writers, 488. See also 
History, Roman; Poets. 

Livia Drusilla, her marriage to Octavia- 
nus, 229; character and ambitions of, 
340 f.; her success in 23 B.c., 345; 
political activities of, 385, 422 f., 
425, 427; influence over Augustus, 
414. 

Livia Medullina, daughter of M. Furius 
Camillus, 377, 422. 

Livia Ocellina, stepmother of the Em¬ 
peror Galba, 386, 422, 511. 

Livii, 19, 340, 422. 

Livius, T., historian, 6; on Camillus, 
305; Caesar, 317; Alexander, 441; 
relations with Augustus, 317, 464; as 
a ‘Pompeianus’, 317, 464; his style, 
486; character of his history, 464 f.; 
pessimism of his Preface , 336, 441; 
‘Patavinitas’, 485 f.; Caligula’s pro¬ 
posal about his works, 489. 

Livius Drusus, M. (tr. pi. 91 B.C.), 16, 
19, 20, 87, 89, 229, 345; as a party 
leader, 87, 285; and Italy, 87, 285 f.; 
oath sworn to, 285. 

Livius Drusus Claudianus, M., father 
of Livia Drusilla, 199, 206, 229. 


Livius Drusus Libo, M. (cos. 15 B.c.), 
a mysterious character, 422, 425. 

Lollia, wife of A. Gabinius, 31. 

Lollia Paullina, her pearls, 381, 477; 
husbands, 499, 518. 

Lollii, 31, 362. 

Lollius, L., legate of Pompeius, 31. 

Lollius, M., of Ferentinum, 362. 

Lollius, M. (cos. 21 b.c.), 236, 329, 362, 
372, 392, 397, 413, 417 . 452, 477 > 509; 
his origin, 362; his career, 398; in 
Galatia, 338, 398; in Macedonia, 391, 
406; in Gaul, 398, 429; with C. 
Caesar, 398, 428 ff.; disgrace and 
death, 428; his son, 435; connexion 
with the Valerii, 362, 379 ; wealth, 381; 
alleged venality, 429; praised by Ho¬ 
race, 429; upbraided by Velleius, 429. 

Lollius Palicanus, M. (tr. pi. 71 b.c.), 
Pompeian partisan from Picenum, 31, 
88, 374. 

Loyalty, need for, in politics, 120, 157; 
impaired by civil war, 157 f.; see also 
Fides. 

Luca, pact of, 37, 44, 72, 326. 

Lucan, see Annaeus. 

Lucania, senators from, 238, 360. 

Lucceius, L., opulent friend of Pom¬ 
peius, 35, 407. 

Lucilia, wife of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, 
3 °- 

Lucilius, friend of Brutus, 206, 435. 

Lucilius, C., satirist, 30 f. 

Lucilius Hirrus, C. (tr. pi. 53 b.c.), 
cousin of Pompeius, 31, 38 f., 363; 
proscribed, 193 f.; his wealth, 31, 
195 - 

Lucilius Longus (cos. suff. a.d. 7), novus 
homo and friend of Tiberius, 363, 
434 L 

Lucius Caesar (grandson of Augustus), 
379, 420, 427; betrothed to Aemilia 
Lepida, 379; honours for, 417, 472, 
474; death of, 430; mourned at Pisa, 
472 . 

Lucretius Cams, T., 251,461; quoted to 
illustrate politics, 513. 

Lucullus, see Licinius. 

Ludi SaeculareSy 84, 218, 339, 381 f., 
443 - 

Lugdunum, 347, 406; altar at, 474; 
patriotism of, 478. 

Lurius, M., partisan of Octavianus, 235, 
376; in Sardinia, 213, 216; at Actium, 
297; wealth, 380. 

Lusitania, origin as a province, 395. 



INDEX 


Lusus Troiae, 445. 

Lutatii, iq, 492. 

Lutatius Catulus, Q. (cos. 78 u.c.), his 
eminence and virtues, 21; political 
activities, 22, 25, 33; insulted by 
Caesar, 56; kinsmen, 21, 24. 

Lycoris, mistress of Gallus, 252. 

Macedonia, in 44 u.c., 107, no f.; 
legions of, 110, 126; seized by Brutus, 
171 ; in the Triumviral period, 222 f., 
266; campaigns of Crassus, 308; a 
senatorial province, 314, 315, 328 IT.; 
taken by Augustus, 394, 400 f.; 
soldiers from, 295, 457; governors, 
21, 36, 107, no f., 112, 135, 222 f., 
266, 302 f., 328 tf., 333, 390 f., 398, 
400 f. 

Machaeras, leader of Roman troops, 201. 

Machares, name in the Pontic dynasty, 
201. 

Maecenas, C., opponent of Livius 
Drusus, 89. 

Maecenas, partisan of Sertorius, 129. 

Maecenas, C., 129, 131; diplomatic 
missions of, 213, 217, 224, 225; in 
charge of Rome, 233, 292, 298; rela¬ 
tions with poets, 242, 253 f., 460, 
466 f.; in 23 b.c., 340, 341 f.; as a 
domestic minister, 347; character and 
vices, 341 f., 409, 452; luxury, 342; 
wealth, 380; poetry, 342; style, 484; 
(.efends Sex. Appuleius, 483; dis¬ 
dains the senatorial career, 359; de¬ 
cline and death, 409, 412; his wife 
Terentia, 277, 341; name and origin, 
129. 

Maecenas, L., 129, 132. 

Magistracies, access to, 11 ff.; under the 
Triumvirs, 196 f.; provisions of 
Augustus, 369 ff.; dispensations, 369, 
373, 4*7 f•; see also Consulate. 

Magiu Maximus, M., from Acclanum, 
procurator and prae/ectus Aegypti , 
356 . 383 . 4 ”. 437 - 

Magius, Minatus, local dynast from 
Acclanum, 82, 88, 383. 

Magnates, see Dynasts, Municipia. 

Magnitudo animi , 51, 70, 146, 151, 442, 
5 ° 4 - 

Maiestas , 426, 487, 505. 

Mamurra, of Formiae, praefectm fabrum 
of Caesar, 63, 71, 355 ; his wealth, 71, 
380. 

Manius, agent of Antonius, 208, 209. 

Manlii, 10, 18, 357. 


Manlius Torquatus, L. ( cos . 65 B.C.), 
marries a woman from Asculum, 357. 

Mantua, 465. 

Marcella (Major), her husbands, 378, 
379; her daughter Claudia Pulchra, 
\- 2 1 • 

Marcella (Minor), her marriages, 378, 
421, 422. 

Marcellus, see Claudius. 

Marcia, second wife of Cato, 24, 36. 

Marcia, wife of Paullus Fabius Maxi¬ 
mus, 421, 468, 496. 

March, 19, 85, 163, 496. 

Marcii Censorini, 379. 

Marcii Philippi, 19, 496. 

Marcii Reges, 25, 68. 

Marcius, ( cos . stiff . 36 B.c.), 199, 243. 

Marcius, Ancus, King of Rome, 68, 85. 

Marcius Censorious, C. (Marian parti¬ 
san), 19. 

Marcius Censorinus, L. ( cos . 39 B.c.), 
Caesarian and Antonian partisan, 221, 
266, 327; proconsul of Macedonia, 
222; his triumph, 244; acquires 
Cicero’s mansion, 195, 380. 

Marcius Censorinus, L. ( cos . 8 b.c.), 
496. 

Marcius Coriolanus, 85. 

Marcius Crispus, Q., Caesarian parti¬ 
san, 64, hi, 171, i99;*his extensive 
military experience, 396. 

Marcius Philippus, L. (for. 91 B.c.), his 
political actions, 19, 21, 28; his 
caution and craft, 19, 128, 517. 

Marcius Philippus, L. (for. 56 B.C.), 
35 f., 62, 197; relations with Octa- 
vianus, 114, 128, 134, 142, 147, 164, 
167, 169, 170, 322; his character, 
128; family and kinsmen, 36, 112, 
128. 

Marcius Philippus, L. (for. suff. 38 B.c.), 
as a Caesarian, 64; his consulate, 
229; proconsul of Spain, 239; repairs 
temple of Hercules, 241; last consul 
of his line, 496. 

Marcius Rex, Q. (for. 68 B.C.), 20, 23. 

Marcomanni, 400, 431. 

Marius, C. ( cos . 107 b.c.), 9, 16, 86, 
441, 515; his policy, 86, 94; party, 
19, 65, 86, 93 f.; in relation to 
Italians, 86 f.; and novi homines , 94; 
relationship with the Julii, 25, 76; his 
memory, 65, 89 f. 

Marius, T. f soldier from Urvinum, 353, 
354 - 

Marmaridae, war against, 399. 



INDEX 


Maroboduus, King of the Marcomanni, 
40°, 431. 

Marriage, dynastic, 12, 20, 33, 34, 40, 
43, 69, 189, 229, 238, 345, 378,421 ff., 
491 ff.; legislation concerning, at 
Rome, 443 ff. 

Marrucini, 91, 169, 359, 485. 

Mars Ultor, temple and forum of, 
449, 470 f., 522. 

Marsi, 86 f.; their proverbial valour, 86, 
287, 449; nomenclature, 93 ; senators 
from, 91, 200. 

Matius, C., friend and agent of Caesar, 
71,81, 407; his loyalty, to6; his letter 
quoted, 121 ; helps Octavianus, 131. 

Matius, C., the younger, 71. 

Mausoleum, of Augustus, 305, 438, 522. 

Media, Anionius’ invasion, 264 f.; 
relations with, 265 f.; and Octavianus, 
301. 

Mediolanium, 150, 503; L. Piso pro- 
consul at, 329, 398; the Liberators 
honoured there, 465, 478. 

Mcmmius, C. ( pr. 58 b.c.), 242. 

Memmius, C. {cos. suff. 34 B.c.), 242. 

Memmius Rcgulus, P. (cos. suff. a.d .31), 

499, 51 

Mencdcmus, Caesarian in Thessaly, 
262. 

Mcssalla, see Valerius. 

Messallina, see Valeria. 

Messius, C. ( tr. pi. 57), 37; joins 
Caesar, 66. 

Metellus, see Caecilius. 

Militarism, 448 f.; distaste for, 466, 
467 - 

Military service, of knights, 70 f., 353, 
356, 3Q5 f.; of senators, 395 ff.; a 
qualification for political promotion, 
374 ff- 

Militia equestris , 353 ff., 396; in relation 
to the municipia , 384, 446; Greeks in 
it, 506. 

Milo, see Annius. 

Mimisius Sardus, Post., senator from 
Umbria, 361. 

Mindius Marcellus, M., early partisan 
of Octavianus, 132, 236. 

Minucius Basilus, L., Caesarian parti¬ 
san from Picenum, 92, 95. 

Minucius Thcrmua, Q., partisan of Sex. 
Pompeius, 228. 

Mithridates the Great, 17. 

Mithridates of Pergamum, 76, 262. 

Mocsia, origin of, 373, 394, 400; legates 
of > 399 , 400 f., 436, 437 - 


555 

Monarchy, 9; of Caesar, 55; ‘Hellen¬ 
istic’, 54, 59, 256 f.; inevitability of, 
258, 291 ; constitutional, 320, 516 ff.; 
as the best form of government, 516, 
518; as a guarantee of liberty, 518; 
and concord, 9, 263, 519. 

Money, power of, 14 f., 62, 130 f., 351, 
379 f., 501, 504. 

Mo n u men turn A n cyra n u m , see ResGestac. 

Mos maiorum , nature of, 315 f. 

Mucia, third wife of Pompeius Magnus, 
32, 33, 228. 

Mucius Scaevola, C., Augustan nobilis , 

3 « 2 . 

Mucius Scaevola, P. (cos. 133 n.c.), 60. 

Mucius Scaevola, Q. (cos. 95 b.c.), 32. 

Mummia Achaica, illustrious wife of 
C. Sulpicius Galha, 377, 511. 

Munatius Plancus, C., proscribed, 193. 

Munatius Plancus, L. (cos. 42 B.c.), 95, 

109, 197, 199, 245; legate of Comata, 

110, 165; behaviour in 43 B.c., 173, 
179 f.; use of humanitarian language, 
158 f.; his conduct defended, 180; 
proscribes his brother, 193; in the 
Perusine War, 210 ff., 215; flees to 
Antonius, 215!'.; as proconsul of 
Asia, 223 ; of Syria, 232; as an An¬ 
tonian, 264, 267; flatters Cleopatra, 
281; deserts, 280 f.; proposes the 
name ‘Augustus’, 314, 411 ; as censor, 
339, 402; his priest in Caria, 404; his 
character, 165, 511; rehabilitation, 
511; origin of his family, 95, 283. 

Munatius Plancus Bursa, T., Antonian 
partisan, 132. 

Municipia , government of, 82; votes of, 

169, 286, 364; aristocrats from, 10, 31, 
82 ff., 356, 359; propertied classes, 
14, 49, 89, 359; impoverished families 
91, 129; family trees, 83, 361 ; repute 
and virtues of, 82, 193, 360, 453, 
455 f.; brought into Roman politics, 
285 f., 359 tf., 364; and military ser¬ 
vice, 356; organic function in the 
system of the Principate, 364; see 
also Italy, Novi homines. 

Mu reus, sec Staius. 

Murena, see Terentius Varro Murena. 

Murrcdius, Augustan orator, 456. 

Murrius Umber, Mamius, Augustan 
novus homo , 361. 

Mussidius Pollianus, T., Augustan 
senator, 361. 

Mutina, Battle of, 174. 

Mutina, War of, 169 ff. 



556 INDEX 


Mylasa, 260. 

Mytilene, Pompeian and Caesarian 
partisans from, 76, 263; honours 

Pompeius and Theophanes, 263. 

Narbo, 80; altar at, 473. 

Narcissus, imperial frecdman, 386. 

Narnia, 200; a local god at, 83. 

Nasidius, Q., Pompeian and Antonian 
admiral, 228, 269, 296, 350. 

Nationalism, Italian, 287 f., 453, 4O5 f..; 
Roman, 256, 440 f. 

Naulochus, Battle of, 231. 

Nemausus, 44, 367, 428, 502. 

Neptune, cult of, 228, 241. 

Nero, the Emperor, pedigree of, 495. 

Nerva, the Emperor, 415; his con¬ 
nexions, 501 f.; character of his rule, 
5 J 7 > 5i8. 

Neutrality, in civil war, 5, 51, 62, 64, 
139 , 291, 517. 

Nigidius Figulus, astrologer, 471. 

Nobiles , definition of, 10 ff.; arcana im¬ 
perii, , 12; ideals, 15, 56 f., 70, 121 f., 
146, 151, 157 f., 420, 504, 506 f.; in 
the party of Marius, 19, 65; restored 
to power by Sulla, 17 ff.; attitude 
towards Pompeius, 30 f., 43 ff., 198; 
towards Caesar, 59; in the party of 
Caesar, 61 ff., 94; in the proscrip¬ 
tions, 192, 195; casualties at Philippi, 
205 f.; under the Triumvirate, 243 f., 
257; on the side of Octavianus, 237, 
238 f.; on the side of Antonius, 222, 
269 f., 282; and Augustus, 368, 379, 
419 f., 479; in relation to the con¬ 
sulate, 372 f.; brief renascence, 4i9ff.; 
loss of prerogatives, 404 f.; of ideals, 
506; detestation of Agrippa, 344; 
rancour towards Augustus, 479 ff., 
490 ff.; their survival largely fraudu¬ 
lent, 510 f.; vices of, 511; decline and 
fall of, 490 ff.; superseded in military 
commands, 502 ff. 

Nola, siege of, 87. 

Nomenclature, of local Italian families, 
83 f.; non-Latin, types of, 93 f., 
36if.; Italic, 89, 94, 360 f., 456; 
Etruscan, 85, 129, 362; of Triumviral 
twvi homineSy 199 ff.; Augustan novi 
homines , 360 f.; vicious novi homines , 
45 . 6 - 

Nonia Polla, wife of L. Volusius 
Saturninus, 424. 

Nonii Asprenates, of new nobility, 424. 

Nonius Asprenas, L. (cos. suff. 36 B.c.), 


Caesarian partisan, 64, 111, 199; his 
origin, 92; descendants, 500. 

Nonius Asprenas, (L.), friend of Augus¬ 
tus, 483. 

Nonius Asprenas, L. (cos. stiff, a.d. 6), 
424; legate of Varus, 435 ; proconsul 
of Africa, 438; important family con¬ 
nexions, 434, 437; descendants, 500. 

Nonius Calpurnius Torquatus Aspre¬ 
nas, L. (cos. a.d. 93), 500. 

Nonius Gallus, M., partisan of Octa¬ 
vianus from Aesemia, 289; active in 
Gaul, 289, 302, 308. 

Nonius Quinctilianus, Sex. (cos. a.d. 8), 
434; marries a daughter of C. Sosius, 
498. 

Norba, 200. 

Norbanus, C. (cos. 83 b.c.), Marian 
partisan, 65, 93. 

Norbanus Flaccus, C. (cos. 38 B.c.), 
Caesarian partisan, 65, 200, 235, 325, 
327; in the campaign of Philippi, 
202, 204; in Spain, 239; proconsul of 
Asia, 303; his descendants, 499. 

Norbanus Flaccus, C. (cos. 24 B.c.), 325. 

Noricum, 357, 390, 394, 457. 

Novi homines , definition, 11 ; barriers to 
their advancement, 11, 13, 24, 45, 
358, 374; promoted by Marius, 86, 
94; allies of Pompeius, 31 f.; in the 
Caesarian party, 80 ff.; in the Trium¬ 
viral period, 199 ff., 243 ff.; partisans 
of Octavianus, 129 ff., 234 ff.; mar¬ 
shals of Augustus, 329!., 392 ff.; 
usefulness of, 328, 397; promotion by 
Augustus to the consulate, 372 f.; 
‘militaris industria’, 375 f., 397; vir¬ 
tues, 456; vices, 510; wealth, 381; 
prejudice against, 357 f., 509!'.; re¬ 
habilitation of, 511 f.; descendants of, 
498 ft'.; their steady advance as a his¬ 
torical process, 364 f., 501 ff. 

Novus status , 320, 324. 

Nuceria, 83, 90, 356, 361. 

Nucula, Antonian partisan, 116, 132. 

Numa Pompilius, alleged ancestor of 
Calpumii, 85. 

Nursia, 83, 210, 212, 361. 

Octavia, sister of Augustus, 112, 378; 
marries Antonius, 217; mediates, 
225 ; sent back by Antonius, 226; be¬ 
haviour in 35 B.C., 265; divorce of, 
280; her son Marcellus, 341. 

Octavia, half-sister of Augustus, 112, 
378,421. 



INDEX 


Octavianus, see Augustus. 

Octavii, 19, 83, 493. 

Octavius, the Marsian, Caesarian parti¬ 
san, 91, 200. 

Octavius, C., equestrian grandfather of 
Augustus, 112, 359. 

Octavius, C., father of Augustus, 35, 
36,112,378. 

Octavius, M., Antonian partisan and 
admiral, 269, 296, 350. 

Officers, see Knights, Centurions. 

Oligarchy, as a form of government, 
7 f., 18; of Sulla, 17 ff., 45, 61; code 
of, 57 ff.; liberal oligarchy, 145; in¬ 
evitability of, 7, 346. 

Ollius, T., son-in-law of C. Poppaeus 
Sabinus, 499. 

Opitergium, 75. 

Oppii, 72, 268. 

Oppius, C., Caesarian agent and 
banker, 71 f., 81, 159; after the Ides, 
106; helps Octavianus, 131, 139, 142; 
literary activities, 250, 277, 407. 

Oppius Capito, M., Antonian admiral, 
231, 264, 267 f. 

Oppius Statianus, Antonian partisan, 
264. 

Qptimates, 11, 22, 25, 37, 39, 40 f., &c.; 
as defined by Cicero, 22, 351. 

Optimus status , 320; according to 

Seneca, 518 f. 

Oratory, function of, at Rome, 149 ff.; 
under the Triumvirate, 245 f.; differ¬ 
ent styles of, 245 f.; Asianic, 245 f., 
263, 375; as a qualification for pro¬ 
motion, 374 f.; decline of, in the 
Principal, 483, 487, 515 f. 

Ostorius Scapula, Q., Prefect of the 
Guard, 357. 

Otacilii, 84. 

Otho, the Emperor, 105, 386. 

Ovidii, 289. 

Ovidius Naso, P., abandons latus 
davus, 363; favoured by Paullus 
Fabius Maximus, 460; as a poet, 
467 f-; his exile, 468. 

Ovidius Ventrio, L., dignitary from 
Sulmo, 289, 363. 

Pacorus, Parthian general, 223. 

Paeligni, 86, 89, 90, 193, 359, 363; sena¬ 
tors from, 91, 363; nomenclature, 93. 

Palace, of Augustus, 380; etiquette of, 
385; palace faction, 386. 

Palpellius Hister, Sex., Augustan sena- 
tor, 363. 


557 

Pannonia, origin of, 437; see also Illyri- 
cum. 

Pansa, see Vibius. 

Paphlagonia, oath of allegiance sworn 
there, 288, 473. 

Papinius Allenius, Sex., Augustan sena¬ 
tor, 363. 

Papirius Carbo, Cn. (cos. 85 b.c.), 16, 
27, 28. 

Papius Mutilus, M. (cos. suff. a.d. 9), 
Samnite, 363, 434, 452. 

Paquius Scaeva, P., origin and pedigree, 
361 ; in Cyprus, 406. 

Parma, 95. 

Parthians, 9, 214, 223 f., 263 ff., 301 f., 
338, 388, 428 f. 

Parthini, Illyrian tribe, 223. 

Passienus Rufus, L. (cos. 4 b.c.), re¬ 
markable novus homo , 93, 362; rela¬ 
tions with Sallustius Crispus, 384, 
501 ; proconsul of Africa, 401. 

Patavinitas, nature of, 485 f. 

Patavium, 465 ; total of knights at, 292; 
senator from, 363; conspirator from, 
478; requisitions at, 464; prudery of, 
455 * 485; opulence of, 485; ‘Pata- 
vinitas’, 485 f. 

Pater patriae, 411, 482, 519 f. 

Patricians, 10, 18 f.; revived by Sulla, 
68; revived by Caesar, 68; on Caesar’s 
side, 68 f.; ideals and ‘values’ of, 
69 f.; local origins of, 84; liberalism 
of, 70, 345; patricians surviving in 
33 11.c., 244; added by Octavianus, 
244, 306, 376; created by Augustus, 
382; decline of, 491 ff. 

Patriotism, spurious appeals to, 157 f.; 
growth of, in Italy, 287 f.; north- 
Italiarj, 465; Roman, 440 f.; in mili¬ 
tary colonies, 478. 

Patronage, control of, 15, 32, 36, 39, 
55* 107* -238, 239, 242, 369 ff., 395. 

Paullina, wife of M. Titius, 379. 

Pax, 2, 9, 156, 303 f., 470, 519. 

Pax Augusta, 470, 506. 

Peace, see Pax. 

Peasants, as soldiers, 449 ff.; idealiza¬ 
tion of, 453, 456. 

Pcdius, Q. (cos. suff. 43 b.c.), nephew of 
Caesar, 64; his career, 128 f.; con¬ 
sulate, 186, 197; related to Messalla, 
237 - 

Peducaei, 235. 

Peducaeus, C., falls at Mutina, 235. 

Peducacus, Sex., legate of Caesar, 64, 
hi, 199; his family, 235. 



5 $8 INDEX 


Peducaeus, T. (cos. stiff. 35 B.c.), 200, 
235 , 49 «- 

Pergamum, 76, 262. 

Perperna, M. (cos. 130 B.c.), Etruscan 
novus homo , 85, 93. 

Perperna, M. (cos. 92 b.c.), his death, 
61. 

Perperna, M. (associate of Sertorius), 
129. 

Perusia, as origin of Pansa, 90; War of, 
207 ff., 213; sack of, 211 f., 466. 

Petraeus, C’aesarian in Thessaly, 262. 

Petreius, M., Pompeian partisan, 31, 
163 ; his military experience, 396. 

Petronius, C., noted voluptuary, 105. 

Petronius, P., praefectus Aegypti, 338. 

Petrosidius, L., Caesarian centurion, 89. 

Pharsalus, Battle of, 50. 

Philhellenism, 135, 262 f. 

Philippi, campaign and battle of, 202 ff. 

Philippics , of Cicero, ro4, 140, 146 f., 
162 ff. 

Philippus, sec Marcius. 

Philodemus, Epicurean from Gadara, 
135 . x 5 °- 

Philosophy, 57, 135 f., 144 f-, 247. 

subordinate educational value of, 
445 - 

Piccnum, in the clientele1 of the Pom¬ 
peii, 28, 92 ; goes over to Caesar, 49, 
90; Pompeian partisans from, 28, 
31, 88, 90; Caesarians, 92; other men 
from Picenum, 200; Augustan newi 
homines , 362, 364; a Catilinarian 

rising there, 89; as a place for re¬ 
cruiting, 126, 186. 

PietaSy 157, 163, 201, 208, 228, 310, 350, 
446, 448, 481, 501. 

Pinarius Scarpus, L., kinsman of 
Caesar, 128 f.; an Antonian, 266, 
269; governor of Cvrcne, 298. 

Pirates, wars against, 29, 31, 228. 

Pisa, patriotic town-council of, 418, 
472 , 519 f- 

Pisaurum, 132, 296. 

Piscinariiy 23. 

Piso, see Calpurnius and Pupius. 

Placentia, 74, 150, 357. 

Plancina, granddaughter of L. Munatius 
Plancus, 512. 

Plancius, Cn., defended by Cicero, 89. 

Plancus, see Munatius. 

Plautii, 85, 399, 422. 

Plautius, A. (cos. stiff. 1 b.c.), 422. 

Plautius Hypsaeus, P., consular candi¬ 
date for 52 b.c., 40. 


Plautius Rufus, conspirator, 478. 

Plautius Silvanus, M. (cos. 2 b.c.), 385, 
422; proconsul of Asia, 399, 435; 
legate of Galatia, 399, 435; in Illyri- 
cum, 399, 436; descendants, 500. 

Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, Ti. (cos. 
A.D. 45), 500, 504. 

Plebeians, 10, 68; great plebeian fami¬ 
lies, 19 f.; local origins, 84 f. 

Plebs, venality and Caesarian senti¬ 
ments of, 100 f., 119 f• 1 142; and 
Augustus, 322, 370, 468 ff., 478. 

Plinius Rufus, L., partisan of Sex. 
Pompeius, 228, 232. 

Plotina, wife of Trajan, 415 ; her origin, 
502. 

Plotius Plancus, L., proscribed, 193. 

Plotius Tucca, friend of Virgil, 225. 

Plutocracy, 452, 458, 501 ; disguised by 
the Principate, 351, 358. 

Poets, politics of, 62!., 251 ff.; ‘new 
poets’, 252; and the government, 
251 ff., 459 ff. 

Pola, 363. 

Polemo, King ot x Pontus, 260, 262, 
366. 

Political theory, inadequacies of, 120 f., 
321 f.; concerning the Principate, 
319 ff., 516 ff.; and the unification of 
Italy, 365; of Cicero, 144 f., 318 f., 
351; of Sallustius, 154, 248 f., 515; 
of Tacitus, 512 ff. 

Politics, true character of, 3, 7 f., 11 ff., 

119 ff., i52ff; distaste for, 13, 94, 246, 
358 f., 363, 513 f.; see also Qtties. 

Pompeia, wife of Caesar, 25. 

Pompeia, daughter of Magnus, 269, 
424. 

Pompeia Marullina, from Nemausus, 
502. 

Pompeia Plotina, from Nemausus, 502. 

‘Pompeianus’, meaning of, 317, 464. 

Pompeii, origin of, 28. 

Pompeius, Cn. (cos. suff. 31 b.c.), 279, 
328. 

Pompeius, Q. (cos. 141 b.c.), 30, 85. 

Pompeius, Sex. (son of Magnus), 45; 
pictas of, 157, 228; in Spain, 103, 
126, 139, 166, 178. cognomen of, 157; 
seizes the islands, 189; in Sicily, 202, 
213, 215 f.; peace of Puteoli, 221; 
partisans of, 227 f., 269; cult of 
Neptune, 228; Bellum Siculum , 228ff.; 
defeat and death of, 231 f.; relatives, 
228, 424 f. 

Pompeius, Sex. (cos. 35 B.c.), 200. 



INDEX 


Pompeius Macer, procurator of Augus¬ 
tus, 356. 

Pompeius Macer, Q. (pr. a.d. 15), 367. 

Pompeius Magnus, Cn. (cos. 70 b.c.), 
his origin and early career, 28 ff.; 
position in 62 b.c., 30; dynastic mar¬ 
riages, 31 f., 36, 40, 43; alliance with 
Crassus and Caesar, 8, 34 f.; his con¬ 
trol of provinces, 35, 42; actions in 
59-53 b.c., 36 ff.; sole consulate, 39; 
in 52-50 b.c., 40 ff.; at the outbreak 
of the Civil War, 42 f., 45 ff.; his 
strategy, 49, 90, 102; his death, 50. 

His family, 28 f.; relatives, 30 f.; 
descendants, 228, 423, 425, 496 f.; 
adherents and legates, 31 f., 44 f., 67, 
396; political allies, 28 f., 43 ff., 491; 
freedmen, 76, 385; provincial clien¬ 
tele!, 30, 42, 74 ff., ?6i ff. 

His character, 26 f., 137; as a cham¬ 
pion of the Republic, 50 f.; as a 
popularis , 29, 65; a partisan of Sulla, 
65; an oriental dynast, 30, 54, 74, 
261 f., 473; excessive honours at Rome, 
32; at Miletopolis, 30; at Mytilene, 
263; Pompeius as a precedent for 
Augustus, 316 ; his posthumous repu¬ 
tation, 317, 442. 

Pompeius Paullinus, brother-in-law of 
Seneca, 502 f. 

Pompeius Rufus, Q. (cos. 88 b.c.), 25, 
28, 279. 

Pompeius Rufus, Q. (tr. pi. 52 B.c.), 
279. 

Pompeius Strabo, Cn. (cos. 89 R.c.), his 
character and actions, 28; adherents 
and clientele1, 71, 75. 

Pompeius Theophanes, Cn., client of 
Magnus from Mytilene, 35, 76, 262; 
as a secret agent, 407; as a historian, 
459; honoured at Mytilene, 263; 
descendants, 356, 367. 

Pompeius Trogus, Narbonensian, secre¬ 
tary of Caesar, 74, 79. 

Pomponia, daughter of Atticus and 
wife of Agrippa, see Caccilia Attica. 

Pomponius Atticus, T., 13, 73, 145, 
192; refuses to help Liberators, 102; 
helps Scrvilia, 102, 192; in the pro¬ 
scriptions, 192 f.; relations with An- 
tonius and Octavianus, 257; death¬ 
bed of, 257; his estates in Epirus, 108; 
prosopographical studies, 508. 

Pomptinus, C., legate of Cicero in 
Cilicia, 396. 

Pontifex maximus, dignity of, 25, 68, 


559 

109, '232; retained by Lepidus, 447; 
assumed by Augustus, 469. 

Pontius Telesinus, Samnite leader, 87. 

Pontus, client kingdom of, 260, 366. 

Poppaea Sabina, wife of Nero, 499. 

Poppaedius Silo, Marsian, in the com¬ 
pany of Ventidius, 91, 200, 223, 359. 

Poppaedius Silo, Q., Marsian leader, 
26, 87. 

Poppaeus Sabinus, C. (cos. a.d. 9), 
novus homo , 362, 434; legate of 

Moesia, 397, 437; his daughter, 499; 
origin, 362. 

Poppaeus Secundus, Q. (cos. stiff, a.d. 
9), novus homo , 362, 434; a bachelor, 
452, 498. 

Populates, 11, 16, 61, 65, 72, 153. 

Porcia, wife of L. Domitius Aheno- 
barbus (cos. 54 B.c.), 21, 24. 

Porcia, wife of M. Calpurnius Bibulus 
(cos. 59 b.c.), 24; marries M. Brutus, 
58, 116. 

Porcius Cato, C., enemy of Pollio, 
92. 

Porcius Cato, L. (cos. 89 b.c.), 26. 

Porcius Cato, M., the Censor (tos. 195 
B.c.), 26, 85; as a landowner, 452; as 
a historian, 508. 

Porcius Cato, M, (‘Uticensis’), and the 
Catilinarians, 25 f.; as a leader of the 
Optimates , 26, 146; his connexions, 
21, 23 f.; his party, 44 f., 268, 492; 
condones bribery, 34, 100; hates 

Italians and bankers, 26; opposes 
Pompeius, 33 f.; against Caesar, 34; 
his policy in 52 b.c., 37, 46 ; misses the 
consulate, 40 ; in the Civil Wars, 46, 
49, 50; his death, 50; character, 26; 
dominated by Servilia, 23 ; influence 
on Brutus, 58; philosophical studies, 
57; feuds against Pompeius and 
Caesar, 26 f., 46; laudations of Cato, 
56, 138 f., 250, 459, 460; repute under 
the Principate, 329 f., 506 f.; Augus¬ 
tus’ verdict, 320, 506. 

Porcius Cato, M., son of Cato Uticensis, 
205. 

Porcius Cato, M. (cos. suff. a.d. 36), 
delator, 492. 

Portents, about Octavianus, 471 f. 

Postumii, 64. 

Potamo, of Mytilene, 262. 

Potentia, 472 f. 

Praecia, political intriguer, 385. 

Praefecti , equestrian, 70 f., 353, 355 f. 

Praefectus annonae , 357, 403. 



560 INDEX 


Praefectus Aegypti , 300, 309 f., 338, 
357 , 4 ii- 

Praefectus equitum , 70 f., 353, 396. 

Praefectusfabrum , 71, 355 f., 383. 

Praefectus praetorio, 357, 358, 384. 

Praefectus urbi, 403 f., 436. 

Praefectus vigilum , 357, 403. 

Praeneste, 91; the divine founder of, 85. 

Praetorian Guard, 353, 357; see also 
Praefectus praetorio. 

Priesthoods, as patronage, 238, 381 f. 

Primus, M., proconsul of Macedonia, 
330; trial of, 333, 341. 

Princeps, meaning of term, 10, 311 f., 
519 ff.; ‘salubris princeps’, 316, 519; 
‘optimus princeps’, 519. 

Princeps senatus , 307. 

Principate, of Augustus, 1 ff.; powers 
of, 313 f., 336 f.; theory of, 315 ff., 
516 ff.; organic and personal char¬ 
acter of, 322 f., 520 f.; collegiality, 
337 f., 346 f., 433; succession to, 
342 f., 346, 415 ff., 521 f.; the ‘op¬ 
timus status’, 518 f. 

Principes , definition of, 10, 311; ideal 
principes , 37, 145 ; as political dynasts, 
8 f., etc.; inadequacy of principes in 
43 B.C., 197; function under Augus¬ 
tus, 348, 379, 387, 392; prerogatives 
of, 322; loss of prerogatives, 404 f.; 
need for their moral reform, 442; 
rivals of Tiberius, 433 f.; in com¬ 
parison with Augustus, 311, 404, 
521 f. 

Privato consilio , 160, 163. 

Proconsuls, danger from, 310, 328; ap¬ 
pointment of, under the Principate, 
330, 382, 395 ; with armies under the 
Principate, 314, 328, 330, 394; divine 
honours for, 30, 263, 405, 473; be¬ 
haviour of, in the Principate, 477. 

Proculeius, C., Roman knight, 236, 266, 
299, 334> 409; character and virtues 
of, 334 , 358. 

Procurators, 356. 

Profiteers, Caesarian, 76 f., 380; in the 
proscriptions, 191, 194 b; from the 
Civil Wars, 351, 354, 380 f., 451 f., 
512 - 

Proletariat, Italian, 15,89,180f., 352, 514. 

Propaganda, of Octavianus in 44 b.c., 
116 f., 120, 125; political, 154 ff., 
208, 218, 256; poetry as, 251 ff., 
460 ff.; against Antonius and Cleo¬ 
patra, 270 f., 273, 275, 289, 305; in 
the Principate, 459 ff. 


Propertius, Sex., 252; his origin and 
poetry, 466 f.; on Cornelia, 467; 
friends and relatives, 384, 466. 

Propertius Postumus, C., Augustan 
senator, 384, 466. 

Proscriptions, iqoff. 

Provinces, control of, in 60-58 B.c., 
35 f.; in 50 B.c., 42; in 44 b.c., 102 f., 
nof.; allotment in 44 B.c., 103, 
107; of the Triumvirs, 189, 206 f., 
217; government in the Triumviral 
period, 310; arrangements of An¬ 
tonius, 266; allegiance in 32 B.c., 
292; control of, after Actium, 302 f.; 
division in 27 B.c., 313 ff., 323 ff., 
394; consular and praetorian, 326 ff., 
393; Augustus’ control of senatorial 
provinces, 382, 406; provinces taken 
over by Augustus, 394, 406; control 
of, in A.L). 14, 437!'.; loyalty to the 
Principate, 476 f. 

Provincials, in the Senate, 79 f., 367, 
455 f-, 5 QI ff-; in the equestrian ser¬ 
vice, 367, 506; in the legions, 295, 
457; wealth of, 490, 501 f.; virtues 
of, 455; as emperors, 366, 490, 501. 

Ptolemy Auletes, 37, 73. 

Ptolemy Caesar, 277, 282, 300. 

Ptolemy Philadelphus, 261. 

Publicani, 14, 67, 271 f.; under the 
Principate, 355, 477. 

Pulcher, see Claudius. 

Pupius Piso Calpurnianus, M. (cos. 
61 b.c.), 32, 33. 

Pythagoreanism, 150, 218, 247. 

Pythodorus, of Tralles, 262. 

Quies, 14, 504, 517. 

Quinctilius Varus, last of his family, 
496. 

Quinctilius Varus, P. (cos. 13 b.c.), 377, 
421, 424, 425, 434; proconsul of 
Africa and legate of Syria, 401 ; in 
Germany, 432, 433; responsibility 
for the disaster, 511 ; connexions of, 
424, 434, 437; character, 511; his son, 
496. 

Quinctilius Varus, Sex. (q. 49 B.c.), 199, 
206. 

Quinctius, L., father-in-law of Pollio, 
x 93 - 

Quinctius Crispinus Sulpicianus, T. 
(cos. 9 b.c.), 377; paramour of Julia, 
426. 

Quintilian, see Fabius. 

Quirinius, see Sulpicius. 



INDEX 


Rabirius, epic poet, 488 f. 

Rabirius Postumus, C., financier, his 
importance, 73; services to Caesar, 
82; not given the consulate, 82, 95; 
helps Octavianus, 131. 

Raetia, 357, 394. 

Rationarium imperii , 410. 

Reate, 90, 354. 

‘Rechtsfrage’, slight importance of, 48. 

Reform, moral, the need for, 52 f., 
335; carried out by Augustus, 339, 
440 ff.; dubious features of, 452 f. 

Religion, political use of, at Rome, 68, 
256; in the East, 263, 273 f., 473 f.; 
religions, alien, 256, 448; control of, 
by Augustus, 411; reforms, 446 ff.; 
degree of genuineness, 448. 

Remmius Palaemon, Q., grammarian 
and viticultor, 451. 

Renegades, 281 f., 349 f., 511 f. 

Representation, meaning of, in politics, 
93, 364; of Italy at Rome, 91, 93, 
364 f.; indirect, 364, 519. 

Republic, Restoration of, 3, 313 ff., 323; 
true character of, 325, 351. 

Republicanism, in the Principate of 
Augustus, 320, 420, 506; true charac¬ 
ter of, 514; in northern Italy, 465, 
478 - 

Republicans, under the Principate, 
318, 320, 335, 338 f., 420, 481 ff., 
512 ff. 

Res Gestae , of Augustus, 438, 522 ff.; 
their literary style, 484. 

Res publica, a facade, 11 f.; Caesar’s 
opinion, 53; made a reality by the 
Principate, 513 f., 519. 

Res publica constituta, ideal of, 52 f., 
92 f., 160. 

Rhosus, 236. 

Roads, care and repair of, 402; im¬ 
portance in military policy, 413; Via 
Egnatia, 202, 294, 413; Aemilia, 404; 
Domitia, 404 f.; Latina, 402; Flami- 
nia, 188, 402. 

Romulus, 186; cult and imitation of, 
305 313 f., 472, 520, 524; in Livy, 

464; in Ennius, 520. 

Rubellius Blandus, C., ancestor of 
Nerva, 501. 

Rufilla, alleged mistress of Octavianus, 

277. 

Rufinus, freedman of Caesar, 76. 

Rufrenus, legate of Lepidus and ardent 
Antonian, 189, 202. 

Rutilii, 25. 


561 

Sabines, see Sabinum. 

Sabinum, patrician families from, 84, 
493; senators from, 31, 83, 90, 361. 

Salassi, conquest of, 329. 

Sallustius Crispus, C., his origin, 90, 
420; tribunate, 66; expulsion from 
Senate, 66, 248; governs Africa Nova 
for Caesar, no f.; retires from 
politics, 247 f.; allegations against 
his character, 250; his historical 
writings, 248 f.; his Histories, 484, 5; 
historical style, 248 f., 485 f.; on 
Roman politics, 16, 154; on Libertas , 
515; on Pompeius, 249; on Caesar 
and Cato, 25, 146, 250; on human 
nature, 249 f., 515; the Epistulae ad 
Caesarem senem, 52 f., 248, 460; 
‘Sallustius’, In Ciceronem, 135. 

Sallustius Crispus, C., grandnephew of 
the historian, 267, 385 ; his gardens, 
380; his son, 384; removes Agrippa 
Postumus, 439; character and services 
of, 410, 412. 

Sallustius Passienus Crispus, C. (cos. 
II, a.d. 44), 384; marries two prin¬ 
cesses, 501. 

Saloninus, dubious son of Pollio, 219. 

Salvia Titisenia, alleged mistress of 
Octavianus, 277. 

Salvidienus Rufus, Q., 93, 95, 121, 132, 
184, 201, 202, 350, 355; origin and 
name of, 129, 220; in the Perusine 
War, 209 ff.; treachery and end, 217, 
220, 334. 

Salvius Apcr, P., praefectus praetorio, 
357 - 

Salvius Otho, M., from Ferentum, 361, 

385- 

Salvius Otho, M., see Otho, the Em¬ 
peror. 

Samnium, in relation to Rome, 17, 87 f., 
287; impoverished by Sulla, 91; no¬ 
menclature, 93; senators from, 88, 
195, 360, 361, 362 f.; condition of, 
under Augustus, 450. 

Sancus, Sabine god, 83. 

Sanquinii, local family, 83. 

Sardinia, in the Triumviral period, 189, 
213, 216; a senatorial province, 328; 
taken over by Augustus, 357, 394, 
406; governors, 213, 216. 

Sardis, honours the grandsons of Augus¬ 
tus, 474- 

Sasema, 131; see also Hostilius. 

Satire, 489; does not attack the wealthy 
and powerful, 490. 



562 INDEX 


Satrius, M., Picene landowner, 92. 

Satyrus, from Chersonnesus, 262. 

Saxa, see Decidius. 

Scaeva, Caesarian centurion, 70. 

Scaurus, see Aemilius. 

Scipio, see Cornelius. 

Scribonia, wife of Octavianus, 213, 219, 
229; her other husbands, 229. 

Scribonia, wife of Sex. Pompeius, 213; 
her descendants, 423, 49b f. 

Scribonia, wife of M. Licinius Crassus 
Frugi, 497* 

Scribonii, 424 f., 496 f., 499. 

Scribonius Curio, stepson of M. An- 
tonius, 269, 299. 

Scribonius Curio, C. (cos. 76 b.c.), 19, 
63. 

Scribonius Curio, C. ( tr. pi. 50 b.c.), 
becomes a Caesarian, 41 f.; his friends 
and enemies, 63, 66; his relationship 
to L. Aemilius Paullus, 69; his death, 
76, 110. 

Scribonius Libo, L. (cos. 34 b.c.), father- 
in-law of Sex. Pompeius, 45, 213, 215, 
221, 228; joins Antonius, 232, 269; 
his descendants, 424 f., 497. 

Scribonius Libo, L. (cos. a.d. 16), 425. 

Scribonius Libo Drusus, M. (pr. a.d. 
rb), 425. 

Scutarius, veteran and client of Augus¬ 
tus, 353. 

Seianus, see Aelius. 

Seius Strabo, L., friend of Augustus, 
358, 506; praefectus praetorio , 411, 
437; family of, 358, 384, 436 f. 

Seleucus, admiral from Rhosus, 236. 

Sempronia, daughter of Atratinus, 
269. 

Sempronia, political lady, 384 f. 

Sempronii, 19, 493. 

Sempronius Atratinus, L. (cos. suff. 34 
B.C.), admiral of Antonius, 231, 269; 
deserts to Octavianus, 282; proconsul 
of Africa, 328, 339; his family and 
relatives, 269. 

Sempronius Gracchus, last of the Grac¬ 
chi, 493. 

Sempronius Gracchus, C. (tr. pi. 123 
b.c.), 13. 

Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. (tr. pi. 133 
B.C.), 12, 60, 494. 

Sempronius Gracchus, Ti., paramour 
of Julia, 426, 493. 

Senate, size of, 11, 81, 196, 349, 370; 
entry to, 11, 167 f., 358, 370; in¬ 
creased by Sulla, 78, 8t; by Caesar, 


77 ff.; weakness in 44 B.c., 100, 110 f., 
163 ft.; increased by Triumvirs, 196 
ff.; recruitment under Augustus, 358 
ff., 370 ff.; transformation during the 
Empire, 365 ff., 501 ff.; its provinces 
in 27 B.c., 314, 328 f.; loses provinces, 
394, 406; prerogatives in the Re¬ 
public, 153, 160, 167 f.; under the 
Principate, 406, 412; judicial powers, 
406; committees, 408 f.; real function 
under the Principate, 407. 

Senators, as a class, 10 ff.; wealth of, 12, 
14, 135* 380 f.; created by Sulla, 78; 
by Caesar, 78 ff.; social status of, 80 
ff.; Triumviral, 196 ff.; with Octavia¬ 
nus at Actium, 293, 349. 

Senatus consulta under the Principate, 
406. 

Sentinum, 210. 

Sentius Saturninus, C, (cos. 19 B.C.), 
227, 228, 269, 282, 330, 382, 397; 
behaviour as consul, 371; legate of 
Syria, 398, 425 ; on the Rhine, 401, 
435 ; Pompeian relationship, 228, 424; 
descendants, 500. 

Sentius Saturninus Vetulo, proscribed, 
215, 228. 

Sergius Catilina, L., 15, 17, 25; his 
partisans, 66, 89; helped by Crassus, 
26, 60; virtues and vices of, 149 f.; 
his views about novi homines , 11; 
about patricians, 68; his stepdaughter, 

63- 

Sertorius, Q., from Nursia, 90; his 
Etruscan partisans, 129. 

Servilia, (second) wife of L. Lucullus, 
21. 

Servilia, wife of Ap. Claudius Pulcher 
(cos. 54 b.c.), 23, 45. 

Servilia, the mother of Brutus, 12, 21, 
23 f., 136, 185; her ambition and in¬ 
fluence, 23 f., 69; liaison with Caesar, 
35, 58; her hatred of Pompeius, 58, 
69; as a matchmaker, 58, 69, 491; 
profits from confiscations, 77; at the 
conference of Antium, 116; helped 
by Atticus, 102, 192. 

Servilia, daughter of Isauricus, be¬ 
trothed to Octavianus, 182, 189; 

married to Lepidus’ son, 230; her 
death, 298. 

Serv'dii, 18 f., 21, 23, 69, 84, 420, 492. 

Servility, growth of, 152, 487, 507. 

Servilius, son of P. Servilius Isauricus 
(cos. 48 b.c.), 492. 

Servilius Caepio, Q. (cos. 106 B.C.), 19. 



INDEX 563 


Servilius Caepio, Q. (pr. 91 b.c.), 21. 

Servilius Caepjo, Q., uncle of M. Bru¬ 
tus, 21, 23 f., 34. 

Servilius Vatia, P. (cos. 79 b . c .), 20, 21, 
25. 64. 

Servilius Vatia Isauricus, P. (cos. 48 
B.c.), Caesarian partisan, 64, 69, 94; 
proconsul of Asia, 109, 136; attacks 
Antonius, 123; his policy, 134, 135, 
136, 147; praised by Cicero, 164; 
quarrels with Cicero, 170, 182; ap¬ 
pointed an envoy, 172; relations with 
Octavianus, 182, 189; his second 

consulate, 197, 208; career, character 
and connexions, 69, 136; descendants, 
298, 492. 

Sestius, L. (cos. stiff. 23 b.c.), 206, 335. 

Sestius, P. (tr. pi. 57 B.C.), 335. 

Sezriri, 472. 

Sextius, T., Caesarian general, no; in 
Africa, 189, 199, 213 ; his superstition, 
256. 

Sicily, enfranchized by Antonius, 116, 
272; seized by Sex. Pompeius, 189; 
conquered by Octavianus, 230 ff.; as 
a senatorial province, 328, 405. 

Silanus, see Junius. 

Silii, 382. 

Silius, P. (cos. a.d. 3), 400, 435. 

Silius A. Caeeina Largus, C. (cos. a.d. 
13). 435 . 437 - 

Silius Nerva, P. (cos. 20 b.c.), 330, 372, 
425 ; legate in Hispania Citerior, 333; 
proconsul of Illyricum, 329, 390, 429; 
as a friend of Augustus, 376 ; origin, 
362; his wife, 379; descendants, 435, 
500. 

Sittius, of Cales, 193. 

Sittius, P., of Nuceria, 75, 193. 

Slaves, in the Bellum Siculum , 228, 231, 
233; owned by Taurus and Lollius, 
381; enfranchisement, 446. 

Snobbery, character of, at Rome, 150 f., 
358, 509 f.; in the municipia, 101, 
360 f., 454. 

Society, classes of, at Rome, 10 ff., 352, 
365, 510 f., 521; prejudice in, 11, 78, 
81, 354> 357‘» social change, 78 f., 243, 
255 35 i ff-, 455 h, 501 ff. 

Soldiers, Roman, 15; behaviour in re¬ 
volutionary wars, 159, 180, 217, 255 ; 
divorced from politics, 352 f.; avenue 
for promotion in the Principate, 352 
ff.; conditions of service, 389; as 
clients of the Princeps, 352 f., 404; 
virtues of peasant soldiers, 449; social 


status of, 15, 457; see also Army, 
Legions. 

Sosius, C. (cos. 32 B.c.), novus homo and 
Antonian partisan, 200, 267 f.; at 
Zacynthus, 223; as legate of Syria, 
224, 264; builds temple of Apollo, 
241; in 32 B.c., 276, 278, 327; at 
Actium, 295 ff.; as a survivor, 349 f.; 
his origin, 200; his daughter, 498. 

Sosius, Q., incendiary from Picenum, 
200. 

Sotidius Strabo Libuscidius, Sex., a 
prodigy of nomenclature, 361. 

Spain, in relation to Pompeius Magnus, 
29, 37, 42, 405; clientela of the Pom¬ 
peii, 75; relations with Caesar, 75; 
Caesarian partisans, 80; in 44-43 B.c., 
no, 165 f., 189; under the Trium¬ 
virate, 189, 207, 213, 227, 292, 326; 
governors of all Spain in 39-27 b.c., 
227, 239, 292, 302 f., 309, 327; as 
a provincia of Augustus, 313, 326; 
conquest of, 332 f.; provincial divi¬ 
sions in, 326, 395, 401; senators from 
Spain, 80, 367. 501; soldiers, 457; 
emperors, 366, 490, 501 ; importance 
in the Principate, 455, 474. 

Spolia opima, 308. 

Staius Murcus, L., Caesarian partisan, 
91; proconsul of Syria, hi; joins the 
Liberators, 171 ; as an admiral, 202, 
206, 210; his fate, 199, 227; his 
origin, 91. 

Statilia Messallina, wife of Nero, 499. 

Statilii, from Lucania, 237, 382, 425. 

Statilius Taurus, T. (cos. suff. 37 B.c.), 
91, 95, 200, 238, 241, 302, 325, 327, 
329, 397, 402, 413, 425 ; in Sicily, 231; 
in Africa, 233; priesthoods, 238; in 
Illyricurfi, 240; at Actium, 297; per¬ 
haps proconsul of Macedonia, 302; 
in Spain, 302; at Rome, 372; prae - 
fectus urbi y 403 f.; his career in 
general, 325; origin, 237; wealth, 
380 f.; connexions, 379, 425 ; descen¬ 
dants, 498 f. 

Statilius Taurus, T. (cos. a.d. ii), 423, 
4 2 5 * 

Statio principis, 520. 

Statius the Samnite, senator at Rome, 
88, 195. 

Stendhal, compared with Pollio, 485. 

Stertinius Xenophon, C., Greek in 
equestrian service, 506. 

Stoicism, 57, 247, 321, 461, 519. 

Sucssa Aurunca, 30. 



5 6 4 

Suetonius, on the Restoration of the 
Republic, 324. 

Sulla, see Cornelius. 

Sulmo, 90, 289, 363, 468. 

Sulpicii, 18, 511. 

Sulpicius Galba, C. (cos. stiff. 5 b.c.), 

377 ,. 386, 511. 

Sulpicius Galba, Scr., legate of Caesar, 
67, 69, 95 - 

Sulpicius Galba, Ser. (cos. A.D. 33), see 
Galba, the Emperor. 

Sulpicius Quirinius, P. (cos. 12 B.c.), 
236, 376 , 393 , 4 i 9 , 425 , 434 , 452 ; his 
career, 399; Homonadensian War, 
399; legate of Syria, 435; his census 
in Judaea in a.d. 6, 399, 476; attribu¬ 
tion of the Titulus Tihurtinus, 398 f.; 
with Gaius Caesar in the East, 429; 
loyal to Tiberius, 429, 434; his 
origin, 362; wealth, 381; patrician 
wives, 379; connexions, 425; lack of 
offspring, 499. 

Sulpicius Rufus, P. (tr. pi. 88 b.c.), 65. 

Sulpicius Rufus, P., Caesarian, 65. 

Sulpicius Rufus, Ser. (cos. 51 b.c.), as 
consul, 41 ; a neutral in the Civil War, 
45, 64; attitude in 43 B.C., 164, 170 ; 
death, 170, 197; connexions, 64, 134. 

Superstition, spread of, 218, 256, 471 f. 

Syria, held by Crassus, 37; in 44-43 
b.c., 107, hi, 124, 171; in the 
Triumviral period, 214 f., 223 f., 
266 ff.; in the provincia of Augustus, 
313, 315; Agrippa sent there, 338; 
governors, 35, 36, 107, nr, 171, 214, 
223 f., 266 ff., 302 f., 326, 330, 334, 
397 U 398 f., 401, 428, 435, 437 - 

Tacitus, see Cornelius. 

Tarius Rufus, L. (cos. suff. 16 b.c.), 
novus homo , 362, 373, 376, 397, 403, 
425, 452, 498; at Actium, 297; per¬ 
haps proconsul of Illyricum, 330; in 
Macedonia, 391 ; origin, 363; wealth, 
382. 

Tarquinii, 18, 55, 59, 85. 

Tarraco, altar at, 473. 

Tarraconensis, see Hispania Citerior. 

Taurus, see Statilius. 

Taxation, imposed by Triumvirs, 195 f.; 
by Octavianus, 284, 354; remitted by 
Augustus, 351; new taxation, 352,411. 

Teidius, Sex., obscure senator, 94. 

Temples, built by viri triumphales , 241, 
402; Augustus’ repairs, 447. 

Terentia, wife of Cicero, 24, 69. 


INDEX 

Terentia, wife of Maecenas, 277, 334, 
358; beauty of, 342; scandal about, 
277 , 342, 452. 

Terentia, mother of L. Seius Strabo, 
358 . 

Terentius Culleo, Q., legate of Lepidus, 
178. 

Terentius Varro, M., Pompeian partisan 
and scholar, 31; his friends, 31; 
wealth, 195; proscribed, 193, 247; 
literary works, 247, 253 f., 460; mili¬ 
tary experience, 31, 396. 

Terentius Varro, M., attested in 25 B.c., 
330; ? legate of Syria, 334, 338. 
Terentius Varro, P., Narbonensian, 
poet, 253. 

Terentius Varro Lucullus, M. (cos. 73 

B.C.), 21 , 22 , 23. 

Terentius Varro Murena, A. (cos. 23 
B.c.), 225, 325 f., 329, 333, 358, 483, 
504; conspiracy and death of, 333 f.; 
the problem of his full name, 325 f.; 
? his brother, legate in Syria, 329 f. 
Terrasidius, T., officer of Caesar, 89. 
Tertulla, wife of M. Crassus (cos. 70 
B.C.), 22 . 

Tertulla, alleged mistress of Octavianus, 
277. 

Theophanes, see Cn. Pompeius Theo- 
phanes. 

Thermus, see Minucius. 

Theopompus, Caesarian from Cnidus, 
76, 262. 

Thessaly, Caesarians in, 76, 262. 
Thorius Flaccus, proconsul of Bithynia, 
3 ° 3 - 

Thrace, as a client kingdom, 390, 476; 
war in, 391, 398. 

Thucydides, on civil war, 154; imitated 
by Cassius Dio, 154; by Sallust, 248; 
by Pollio, 485. 

Tiberius, stepson of Augustus and 
Emperor (Ti. Claudius Nero), 229, 
341, 39 f.; married to Vipsania, 247, 
345; married to Julia, 416; in the 
Alps and in Illyricum, 390 f. ; retire¬ 
ment to Rhodes, 391, 413 f., 417, 
427 f. ; adoption, 431; in A.D. 6-9, 
431 ff.; powers in a.d. 13, 433 ; acces¬ 
sion, 438 f .; difficulty of his position 
as emperor, 505, 521; edits the Res 
Gestae, 522. 

His character, 417; Republicanism, 
344 f., 418; detests servility, 507; 
attitude to the aristocracy, 344 f., 
368; attitude to novi homines , 434; 




INDEX 565 


Pompeian affinities, 414, 424; his 
friends and partisans, 383, 423, 433 
ff.; his literary style, 484. 

Tibur, 95, 357, 422, 511. 

Ticida, L., lover of a Metella, 63. 

Tillius Cimber, L., Caesarian and assas¬ 
sin, 95, 102 f., 206. 

Timagenes, Greek historian, 486. 

Tisienus Gallus, defends Nursia, 210; 
with Sex. Pompeius, 228. 

Titedius Labeo, minor novus homo , 456. 

Titinius, partisan of Octavianus, 236. 

Titinius Capito, C., equestrian civil 
servant, 514. 

Titiopolis, in Cilicia, 281. 

Titius, Caesarian senator, perhaps from 
Spain, 80. 

Titius, M. (cos. stiff. 31 b.c.), proscribed, 
193; with Sex. Pompeius, 227; as an 
Antonian, 232, 264, 266, 267, 281; 
a city named after him, 281, 405; 
deserts Antonius, 281 f.; at Actium, 
297; under the Principate, 328, 349; 
legate of Syria, 398; his unpopularity, 
376, 478; his wife, 379; no descen¬ 
dants, 498. 

Titulus Tiburtinus , attribution of, 398 f. 

Titurius Sabinus, Q., legate of Caesar, 
67. 

Tota Italia , 16, 86, 88, 284 ff., 466, 
470. 

Trajan, the Emperor, 415, 501, 517 f.; 
his wife, 502. 

Tralles, 262. 

Transpadana, allegiance of, 74; merits 
and virtues of, 455,465 ; recruits from, 
456 f.; senators from, 79, 363. 

Trebellenus Rufus, T., senator from 
Concordia, 363. 

Trebonius, C. (cos. suff. 45 B.c.), legate 
of Caesar, 94; son of a knight, 95; 
proconsul of Asia, 102 f., 164; his 
fate, 172, 197; no descendants, 498. 

Treia, 360. 

Tremellius Scrofa, Cn., landowner and 
friend of Varro, 31. 

Tribunate, 16, 52, 120. 

Tribunes, use of, by dynasts, 29, 32, 35, 
41; sacrosanct!ty of, 233, 336. 

Tnbunicia potestas, 38, 336 f., 389, 416, 
428,431,443,523. 

triumphs, in the Triumviral period, 
241; after Actium, 303; denied to 
senators, 404. 

Triumvirate, founding of, 188 f. ; rein¬ 
forced at Brundisium, 217; renewal 


at Tarentum, 225 ; date of expiry, 225, 
277 f., 279; merits of, as a form of 
government, 347. 

Troy, not to be rebuilt, 305; Trojan 
descent of Julii, 305, 318, 462 f., 
470. 

Tullia, daughter of Cicero, 69. 

Tullius Cicero, M. (cos. 63 B.c.), early 
career and consulate, 24 f., 29 f., 32; 
as a nows homo, 11, 13, 94; relations 
with publicani, 14; with Cato, 137 f., 
146; with Pompeius, 29 f., 37, 45, 
137 f.; with Caesar, 138 f.; activity 
in 60 B.c., 34: exile, 36, 135; feud 
with Piso, 135, 140; in the Civil 
War, 45, 137 f. ; under the Dictator¬ 
ship of Caesar, 53, 56, 81, 138 f., 143 ; 
his verdict on Caesar, 56, 145; in 
March, 44 b.c., 97 ff., 139; meets 
Octavianus, 114, 141; in the summer 
of 44 B.c., 139 ff. ; attacks Antonius, 
123 ; relations with Octavianus, 141 ff. ; 
policy in 44-43 B.c., 143 ff .; the 
Philippics , 104, 140, 146 f.; his policy 
and acts in 43 B.C., 167-86; and the 
consulate, 182 f.; disagreements with 
Brutus, 147 f., 183 ft.; proscription 
and death, 192; Pollio’s verdict, 192. 

His character, 122, 138, 320 f.; 
wealth, 195; town house, 195, 380; 
as an advocate, 149 ff.; as a wit, 152; 
defends Balbus, 72, 151 ; defends 
Caelius and Plancius, 88; defends 
various scoundrels, 81, 144, 150. 

Political programme, 15 f., 37, 88 f., 
319 f.: on tota Italia , 88; on novt 
homines , 89; political illusions, 143; 
political theory, 144 f., 3:8 f., 351; 
repute under Augustus, 318, 321, 
484, 506, 520; general repute and 
rank in history, 4, 146. 

Tullius Cicero, M. (cos. suff. 30 B.c.), 
with the Liberators, 198, 206; his 
consulate, 339; governor of Syria, 
303, 309; character, 303; no descen¬ 
dants, 498. 

Tullius Cicero, Q., 64, 67. 

Turius, L., obscure senator, 81. 

Turranius, C. (pr. 44 B.c.), obscure 
person, 91. 

Turranius, C., praefectus annonae , 357, 
367,411,437. 

Turranius Gracilis, from Spain, 367. 

Turullius, D., assassin of Caesar, 95, 
206, 269, 300. 

Tusculum, 85, 88 f., 362. 



c 66 INDEX 


Ulpius Traianus, M. (cos. a.d. 91), see 
Trajan, the Emperor. 

Umbria, attitude of, in the Bellum 
Italicum , 87; men from Umbria, 90, 
360 f., 466. 

Urbinia, her heirs defended by Pollio, 
193 - 

Urbinius Panapio, perhaps a Marrucine, 
T 93 * 

Urbs Salvia, 473. 

Urgulania, friend of Livia, 385, 422. 

LJrgulanilla, betrothed to Claudius, 422. 

Urvinum, 353. 

Valeria Messallina, 499, 500, 504; her 
lineage, 496. 

Valerii, 10, 18, 84, 85, 163, 238, 244, 
328, 376, 379, 423, 496, 511. 

Valerius Asiaticus, D. (cos. 11, a.d. 46), 
from Vienna, 79, 502. 

Valerius Cato, Cisalpine poet, 251. 

Valerius Catullus, C., his origin, 74, 
251; relations with Caesar, 152; as 
a poet, 251, 460, 461 ; his friends, 63, 
269. 

Valerius Catullus, L., Augustan senator, 

363- 

Valerius Flaccus, L., legate of L. Piso 
in Macedonia, 396. 

Valerius Messalla, M. (cos. suff. 32 b.c.), 
244, 279 - 

Valerius Messalla, Potitus (cos. 29 B.c.), 
244. 

Valerius Messalla Barbatus Appianus, 
M. (cos. 12 B.c.), 373, 378, 379 , 423, 
425 - 

Valerius Messalla Corvinus, M. (cos. 
31 b.c.), as a Republican, 198; an 
Antonian, 206, 222; joins Octavianus, 
237, 238, 368; allegations against 
Antonius, 277; his consulate, 291; 
in Gaul and Syria, 302 f., 309; cam¬ 
paign against Salassi, 329; repairs 
Via Latina, 402; declines to be prae- 
fectus urbiy 403; proposes the title of 
pater patriae , 411; as an orator, 246, 
375; on family history, 377; as a 
patron of letters, 460, 483; his me¬ 
moirs, 484; freedom of speech, 482; 
a supporter of the monarchy, 512; 
relatives and connexions, 198, 238, 
269, 279. 423, 425; descendants, 496. 

Valerius Messalla Corvinus, M. (cos. 
a.d. 58), 496. 

Valerius Messalla Messallinus, M. (cos. 
3 B.c.), 375, 423, 436. 


Valerius Messalla Rufus, M. (cos. 53 
B.C'.), disgraced consular, 62, 69; his 
long life, 165, 412; writings, 377. 

Valerius Messalla Volesus, L. (cos. A.D. 
5). murderous proconsul, 477, 511. 

Valerius Naso, senator from Verona, 

363- 

Valerius Troucillus, C., Narbonensian 
friend of Caesar. 

Valgus, landowner in Samnium, 362. 

Valgius Rufus, C. (cos. suff. 12 B.c.), 
362, 375 - 

Varius Cotyla, Antonian, 189. 

Varius Gemiuus, Q., first Paelignian 
senator, 363. 

Varius Rufus, L., poet, 225, 254. 

Varro, see Terentius. 

Varro, legate in Syria, see M. Terentius 
Varro. 

Vasio, 502, 503. 

Vatinius, P., from Reate, 90. 

Vatinius, P. (cos. 47 B.C.), as tribune, 66; 
attacked by poets, 63, 252; as consul, 
94; proconsul of Illyricum, no, 164, 
171 ; his triumph, 197; his origin, 90; 
relations with Cicero, 144, 152; al¬ 
leged vices and enormities, 149 f.; 
oratorical powers, 178. 

Vediovis, worshipped by the Julii, 68, 
454 - 

Vedius Pollio, P., equestrian friend of 
Augustus, 342, 452 ; activities in Asia, 
410; scandalous luxury, 410. 

Vehilius, M. (pr. 44 b.c.), 91. 

Velitrae, 83, 132, 236, 362. 

Velius Rufus, C., his military -career, 
354 * 

Velleius, C., grandfather of Velleius 
Paterculus, 383. 

Velleius Paterculus, C., his origin, 360; 
military service, 356, 360, 428; 

family, 383 f.; dishonesty of his 
history, 393,488 f.; on the Restoration 
of the Republic, 324; on the departure 
of Tiberius, 420; M. Lollius, 429; the 
return of Tiberius, 431; the accession 
of Tiberius, 437; his questionable 
verdicts, 488. 

Ventidii, of Auximum, 92. 

Ventidius, P. (cos. suff. 43 b.c.), origin 
and early career, 71, 92; a ‘muleteer*, 
92, 151; h is early services to Antonius, 
126, 176, 178; his consulate, 188; in 
Gaul, 189, 202, 210; in the Perusine 
War, 210 ff.; against the Parthians, 
223 f.; his triumph, 224, 231, 241; 



INDEX 


as a type of novus homo , 199 f.; no¬ 
menclature, 93, 200. 

Venus Genitrix, 471. 

Venus victrix , 67. 

Venusia, 254. 

Vergilius Maro, P., relations with Pollio, 
218 f., 252 f.; with Maecenas, 253, 
460; at Tarentum, 225; the Eclogues , 
253; the Fourth Eclogue , 218; the 
Georgies , 254; the Aeneid , 304 f., 317 
f., 462 ff.; his views upon Octavianus 
after Actium, 304 f.; on Troy, 305; 
Pompcius and Caesar, 317; Catilina 
and Cato, 317; Italy, 450, 463; the 
Aeneid as an allegory, 462 ff.; north- 
Italian patriotism, 465 f. 

Verginius Rufus, L. (cos. a.d. 63), from 
Mediolanium, 503. 

Verona, 74, 251, 363. 

Verres, C\, proscribed, 195. 

Vespasiae, in the Sabine country, 83. 

Vespasian, the Emperor, 386, 415, 455; 
and the nobiles, 504; origin and an¬ 
cestors, 83, 354, 561. 

Vespasii, of Nursia, 83. 

Vespasius Pollio, equestrian officer, 361. 

Vestini, senator from 361. 

Veterans, allegiance of, 15; Sullan, 88, 
89; Caesarian, 101, 120, 255; bribed 
by Octavianus, 125 ; changes of side, 
159; pacifism of, 180 f.; Roman com¬ 
pared with Hellenistic, 250; provision 
for, in, 196, 207 ff; 233, 304, 352, 
450; special privileges, 243; Augus¬ 
tus’ measures, 352; as small capita¬ 
lists, 450; a conservative factor, 352, 

7 477 f> 

Vettius, the Picene, creature of Sulla, 
2 49 - 

Vettius Scato, impoverished Marsian, 
9 *- 

Vibidius, disreputable novus homo , 456. 

Vibienus, C., obscure senator, 94. 

Vibii Visci, perhaps from Brixia, 363. 

Vibius Habitus, A. (cos. sujj. a.d. 8), 
novus homo from Larinum, 362, 434, 
498. 

Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, C. (cos. 43 
bx\), Caesarian novus homo , 71; his 
name and origin, 71, 90; attitude in 
44 B.C., 100, 114, 133, 134; as consul, 
162, 167, 172; in the War of Mutina, 
173 f., 176; alleged death-bed advice, 
177 ; character and policy, 133; his 
wife, 134; no consular descendants, 
49 &. 


567 

Vibius Postumus, C. (cos. suff. A.D. 5), 
novus homo from Larinum, 362, 434, 
498; in Illyricum, 436. 

Vibo, 237. 

Vice, allegations of, 127, 149 ff., 276 f., 
281, 426 f.,'432, 479 ff., 509 f.; not 
always pernicious, 105, 442. 

Vicomagistri , 469, 472. 

Victoria Augusti , 470. 

Vienna, 502. 

Vigil es, 357, 403. 

Vindex Libertatis, 155, 306, 469. 

Vinicii, of Cales, 194, 289. 

Vinicius, L. (cos. stiff. 33 B.C.), 194, 200, 
242, 328. 

Vinicius, L. (cos. suff. 5 B.c.), 375. 

Vinicius, M. (cos. suff. 19 b.c.), novus 
homo , his origin, 194, 362; in Gaul, 
329, 3391 perhaps proconsul of Mace¬ 
donia, 330; his consulate, 372; a 
personal friend of Augustus, 376; his 
patronage, 384; long military career, 
397, 413; re-emergence after 6 b.c., 
419; in Illyricum, 329, 390, 394, 400; 
in Germany, 393, 401, 431; attitude 
towards Tiberius, 425; descendants, 
499 f.; nothing known to his dis¬ 
credit, 509. 

Vinicius, M. (cos. a.d. 30), 194, 384; 
marries Julia Livilla, 499; fate of, 499, 
504 - 

Vinicius, P. (cos. suff. a.d. 2), 375, 400, 
435 -. 

Vipsania, daughter of Agrippa, marries 
Tiberius, 257, 345; divorced, 378; 
married to Asinius Gallus, 416, 512. 

Vipsanius Agrippa, M. (cos. 37 b.c.), 95, 
129, 131, 187, 201, 331, 335, 336; his 
origin and name, 129; at Apollonia, 
129; in the Perusine War, 209 ff.; in 
Gaul, 227, 231; consulate, 231; in 
the Rellum Siculum , 231 f.: marries 
Caecilia, 238; in Illyricum, 240; 
work on aqueducts, 241 f., 403 ; at the 
bedside of Atticus, 257; in the War 
of Actium, 295 ff.; in 28 b.c., 306; 
constitutional powers of, 337, 389; 
his position after 23 b.c., 345 f.; in 
the East, 338, 342, '371, 388 f.; in 
Spain, 333, 389, 457; in Illyricum, 
391; death, 391; character, 341,343 f; 
Republicanism, 343, 413 ; disliked by 
nobiles , 344; hates Maecenas, 341; 
relations with Tiberius, 344; honours 
declined or accepted, 231, 343 ; ambi¬ 
tion, 343 f.; wealth, 238, 380 f.; his 



568 INDEX 


marriages, 238, 379, 416; writes me¬ 
moirs, 484; his favourite proverb, 343 ; 
a favourable verdict on Agrippa, 509. 

Virgil, see Vergilius. 

Viri militares , as legates, 396. 

Viri triumphales t 241, 327. 

Viriasius Naso, P., Augustan senator, 
361. 

‘Virtues’, cardinal, of Augustus, 313, 
334, 472 f., 481. 

Virtus, 57, 69, 146, 148, 157, 206, 343, 
448, 490, 512. 

Visellius Varro, C. (cos. suff. A.D. 12), 
novus homo , 363. 

Visidius, L., local magnate, 82; his 
origin and family-god, 83; protects 
Cicero in 63 B.c., 89 ; patriotic exer¬ 
tions in 43 b.c., 169 f., 289. 

Vitellii, of Nuceria, 83. 

Vitellius, L. (cos. a.d. 34), 105, 386; his 
career of adulation, 50r. 

Vitellius, P., procurator of Augustus, 
356; his four sons, 361; allegations 
about his family, 487. 

Vitulasius Nepos, Sex. (cos. suff. A.n. 
78), his origin, 361. 

Volaterrae, 82, 83, 87, 362. 

Volcacius Tullus, L. (cos. 33 b.c.), 242, 
466. 

Volceii, in Lucania, 237. 


Volscians, 83, 85, 88. 

Volsinii, 358. 

Voltacilius Pitholaus, L., freedman- 
historian, 251. 

Volumnia, notorious freedwoman, 252. 

Volumnius Eutrapelus, P., friend of 
Antonius, 195, 252. 

Volusenus Quadratus, C., Caesarian 
officer, 71, 355. 

Volusius, Q., kinsman of Tiberius, 424. 

Volusius Saturninus, L. (cos. suff. 12 
B.c.), 362, 381, 434 . 435 . 438 ; con¬ 
nected with Tiberius, 424; descen¬ 
dants, 500. 

Volusius Saturninus, L. (cos. suff. A.D. 
3 ). 5 < 8 . 

Vulcanius, haruspex , 190, 218. 

Wealth, of senators and knights in the 
Republic, 12,14 ; transference through 
the proscriptions, 194 ff., 243, 290, 
351; owned by the partisans of 
Augustus, 380 f., 452, 

Women, political influence of, 12, 384 
ff., 414; position of, 444 f. 

Xenophobia, 244, 256, 287, 290, 440 f. 

Zacvnthus, 223. 

Zeno, of Laodicea, 259. 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OX FOR I 
BY VIVIAN KIIILLR, I'RIN'IFR TO THE UNIVERSITY 



I. THE METELLI 

The family tree of the Caecilii Metelli has been com¬ 
piled with the help of the tables of Miinzer (P-W in, 
1229 f.; RA y 304). Certain additions have been made, 
such as the family of Ap. Claudius Pulcher, the sons of 
Crassus, and three of the five marriages of Pompeius 
Magnus. 

Neither this table nor any of the six that follow 
claims to be exhaustive, to give all collaterals or descend¬ 
ants. In each of them the most important persons and 
relationships are indicated, and the names of consuls 
are printed in black type. On Tables I and II the dates 
are given in years B.c. 





II. THE KINSMEN OF CATO 

This table reproduces the researches of Miinzer, RA y 
328 ff. The leading clue is provided by the two mar¬ 
riages of Livia, the sister of M. Livius Drusus ( tr . />/. 
q 1 B.c.). For the relationship of Cat ulus to the Domitii 
cf. Miinzer, UA, 289 f.; on (J. Servilius Caepio, who 
adopted Servilia’s son Brutus, cf. ih. 333 ff. 




Junia Juma Junia Tcrtia > j 

— M. Aemillus = P. S«rvilius - C. Cassius Hortqwia Q Hortens 

Lepidus Isauricus Longinus ~ Q . Sei \ilius (+42) 

{ cos . 46) (for. 48) (f 42) Cae^io 




III. THE FAMILY OF AUGUSTUS 


This tree, which is designed in the main to illustrate 
the political history and the marriage alliances of the 
Principate of Augustus, omits certain childless matches 
and does not carry his descendants beyond the second 
generation. 



III. THE FAMILY OF AUGUSTUS 








IV. THE AEMILII LEPIDI 

This is based upon Groag’s table ( PIR Z , A, p. 57), 
omitting M\ Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 66 b.c.) and his 
son Q. Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 21 b.c.). Groag’s elucida¬ 
tion of the connexion with the descendants of Pompeius 
and Sulla through the marriage between Faustus Sulla 
and Pompeia the daughter of Magnus (cf. FIR 2 , A 363) 
is accepted here and on Table V. 




^ © 


M. Junius D. Junius L. Junius Junta Lepida Junia CaKina 

Sllanus Sllanus Sllanus 

(«u. a.d. 46) Torquatus Torquatus 

(foi. ad. 53) 




V. THE DESCENDANTS OF 
POMPEIUS 


This table illustrates the alliances between the descen¬ 
dants of Pompeius, Sulla, Crassus, and L. Piso (cos. 
15 B.C.), cf. above, pp. 424 and 496 f. For the Calpurnii 
and the posterity of Pompeius through the line of the 
Scribonii, cf. the stemmata of Groag, P-W xiii, 273 f.; 
PIR 2 , C, facing p. 54. M. Crassus Frugi (cos. a.d. 27) 
is assumed to be the son of L. Piso, adopted by the 
last of the Eicinii Crassi, the consul of 14 b.c. The 
descendants of SuJla are taken from Groag’s table, 
PIR 2 , C, facing p. 362, where, as the author admits, 
there are uncertainties. Not less so in the matter of 
the Arruntii, cf. above, pp. 425 and 497. Further, 
M. Eivius Drusus Eibo (cos. 15 b.c.) and M. Furius 
Camillus (cos. ai>. 8) adhere somehow to this tree. 




Cn. Pompeius M. Crassus > Lictnia Crassus L Calpumiua Piso Licinia Magna = L. Calpumius Piso 

Magnus Frugt (cot. Scnbonianus Frugi Licimanus (fo? A D 57) 

— Antonia a d. 64) (t ' D 69) 



VI. THE FAMILY OF SEIANUS 


The relationships of Seianus were first investigated by 
C. Cichorius, Hermes xxxix (1904), 461 fi\ (with a 
stemma, ib. 470). In the matter of his connexion with 
the Cornelii Lentuli, however, the views of E. Groag 
are here given preference, cf. the table in PlR z y C, 
facing p. 328. 


VII. THE CONNEXIONS OF VARUS 

This is based upon the stemma worked out by K. Groag, 
P-W xvn, 870, with the addition, by conjecture, of 
Nonia Polla. On these relationships cf. above, pp. 424, 
434 > 50 °- 



FAMILY OF SEIANUS 



Asprenas 




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